Kostenko faction of Rukh changes name to Ukrainian National Party (02/02/03)

Kostenko faction of Rukh changes name to Ukrainian National Party

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - National Deputy Yurii Kostenko, chairman of the Ukrainian National Rukh Party, announced on January 23 that the political party had dropped the designation "Rukh" and changed its name to the Ukrainian National Party. The move was made in anticipation of enlargement and unification with other political organizations in preparation for the 2004 presidential elections.

The name change came after the collapse of year-long reunification talks between Mr. Kostenko's Rukh and the National Rukh of Ukraine Party chaired by National Deputy Hennadii Udovenko. Mr. Kostenko's Rukh split from the National Rukh of Ukraine in early 1999 just weeks before the death of its founder and longtime leader Vyacheslav Chornovil.

"Since we have failed to find a way to unite, it is nonsense for both parties to continue to use the name Rukh," explained Mr. Kostenko.

The leader of the new National Party of Ukraine, which will remain a part of the Our Ukraine parliamentary faction, said the name change came as a result of a request from 11 oblast party leaders of the Democratic Party of Ukraine as part of an initiative to move their local organizations into the new Ukrainian National Party. While Democratic Party leader Hanna Antonieva debunked assertions published in a story in the newspaper Den that a unification process is under way, Mr. Kostenko maintained that his party is working with the 11 local Democratic Party leaders.

Mr. Kostenko also said that Our Ukraine faction leader Viktor Yushchenko had accepted the move, with some reservations concerning the abandonment of negotiations to reunite Rukh into a single political organization. However, Mr. Kostenko made it clear he wanted to broaden the national democratic movement in preparation for upcoming elections and was not abandoning cooperation with Mr. Udovenko's National Rukh of Ukraine.

"To win the upcoming presidential elections we do not need a national democratic coalition, we need a coalition of national democratic forces," explained Mr. Kostenko.

Mr. Kostenko spoke during a press conference with Anatolii Matvienko, chairman of the Ukrainian Republican-Sobor Party. Mr. Matvienko said that his party also is negotiating a political merger with the Ukrainian National Party and hoped to form a single party before the end of the year.

"We will unite in December into a single party. It will have such influence as to affect the behavior of the president," said Mr. Matvienko, who is a former close ally of President Leonid Kuchma, but broke with him during the 1998 election season over the way the presidential election campaign was conducted. He has stood firmly in the opposition camp since then. The Sobor Party that he founded after his split with Mr. Kuchma's supporters in the National Democratic Party, recently united with Lev Lukianenko's Ukrainian Republican Party. Both are part of the Tymoshenko Bloc parliamentary faction.

Mr. Matvienko added that, in order to broaden the national democratic spectrum, the unification process must include other political powers. The two party leaders noted that the combined support for the Our Ukraine and Tymoshenko Blocs in last year's parliamentary elections included about a third of the Ukrainian electorate, which far exceeded the electoral support for either the combined pro-presidential forces or the left in the current Verkhovna Rada.

A press release the two party leaders jointly issued underscored that unless the leaders of the various political organizations making up the democratic right work to temper their individual ambitions, the coalition will again fracture and split as it did in the early 1990s, when the movement was most popular. It called on Mr. Yushchenko of Our Ukraine and Yulia Tymoshenko of the eponymous political organization to become political partners.

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