ANALYSIS: New Communist Party eyes voters of the old one (08/13/00)

ANALYSIS

New Communist Party eyes voters of the old one

by Jan Maksymiuk
RFE/RL Poland, Belarus and Ukraine Report

PRAGUE - A July 15 congress of 205 delegates from 19 Ukrainian oblasts as well as from the cities of Kyiv and Sevastopol founded the Communist Party of Ukraine (Renewed) [Komunistychna Partiya Ukrainy (Onovlena)], Interfax reported.

The congress elected Mykhailo Savenko, a lawmaker from the Labor Ukraine parliamentary caucus, as head of the party.

"We are ready to cooperate with everybody who upholds our idea of building a socially just society on the basis of a parliamentary system of rule, and we do not intend to form an opposition to the elected authority. Also, we do not intend to split the left-wing camp - we simply need to heal it and, after having consolidated around us its most active and progressive part, to restore the former influence and authority of Communists," the press service of the party congress quoted Mr. Savenko as saying.

Mr. Savenko told Interfax that his party intends to create a bloc for the 2002 parliamentary elections. He said the bloc will consist of democratically oriented leftist and rightist parties that "want to create a parliamentary republic" in Ukraine. According to Mr. Savenko, the current leftist movement in Ukraine suffers from a leadership cult, which results in the left wing's "permanent election defeats."

Mr. Savenko said his party has nearly 2,500 members. He added that once the party is firmly established, "we and Symonenko will divide up the votes of the [Communist] electorate."

Communist Party of Ukraine leader Petro Symonenko, who earlier warned his comrades about an anti-Communist plot drawn up by President Leonid Kuchma's administration, commented that he did not know about the founding congress of the rival Communist organization. He said the new Communist Party was created by "traitors who are carrying out tasks posed by the presidential administration."

"The creation of a new Communist party was the result of a planned action that aims at not only splitting the leftist movement but also disorienting the electorate. This confirms the opinion that rumors about early parliamentary elections are not groundless," Mr. Symonenko noted.

Jan Maksymiuk is the Belarus, Ukraine and Poland specialist on the staff of RFE/RL Newsline.

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