2003: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

Domestic politics marked by controversy, conflict

Domestic politics, as ever, remained a boiling cauldron of controversy and conflict, and became more so as the 2004 election year approached.

On January 23 National Deputy Yuri Kostenko announced that the Ukrainian National Rukh Party that he chairs had dropped the "Rukh" designation and would now go by the designation Ukrainian National Party. He said the move was made in anticipation of enlargement and unification as the national democratic forces prepared for the 2004 presidential elections.

The name change came after the collapse of unification talks with Mr. Kostenko's party and the Ukrainian National Rukh Party chaired by Hennadii Udovenko. Mr. Kostenko said the decision to change the party's name was made from a realization that the two parties would probably never unite and that it was absurd for both of them to carry the same name.

On May 4 Mr. Udovenko voluntarily stepped down as head of the original National Rukh Party after its 13th congress nearly unanimously elected Borys Tarasyuk the new chairman. Mr. Tarasyuk, a former minister of foreign affairs, received 808 votes from the 838 delegates, 10 voted against the Tarasyuk nomination and 16 abstained.

In his victory speech Mr. Tarasyuk called for the unification of all national democratic forces into a single political organization, which would support a single candidate in the 2004 presidential elections.

"Our goal is to take the reigns of power to build an independent, democratic, prosperous, law-abiding European-type country," said Mr. Tarasyuk.

The congress also approved a resolution calling on National Deputy Viktor Yushchenko, the leader of the Our Ukraine political bloc to which the National Rukh of Ukraine Party belonged, to run for the presidency in 2004.

On September 8 the National Rukh of Ukraine celebrated 14 years since its inception, first as a civic organization and later as a political party. The commemoration was held before the gravesite of Rukh co-founder and longtime leader Vyacheslav Chornovil, who died under mysterious circumstances in a car accident in 1999.

While the changes that took place within the two Rukhs were not all that controversial, the political moves made by the pro-presidential forces in preparation for the 2004 elections certainly were.

President Leonid Kuchma told a national television audience on March 5 that he was ready to move forward on a plan initially proposed by him the previous Independence Day, to turn Ukraine in a parliamentary-presidential political system. He explained that within a few months he would introduce a series of bills into the Parliament to begin the process of Constitutional changes required. "We need to go to a system that is like those found in Europe, a parliamentary/presidential system," Mr. Kuchma argued.

Many of the changes the president proposed the previous August 24 were originally part of a national referendum held in April 2000 that was widely considered rigged. The changes, which had lain dormant in the Parliament since then, would have reduced the number of national deputies from 450 to 300 and created an upper parliamentary chamber. They would also have removed the criminal immunity that lawmakers enjoyed. The president would have had the right to dismiss the Parliament should it not pass a budget or form a working majority within a stipulated period of time.

In addition the president called for codifying in the Constitution a requirement that lawmakers must form a majority coalition, then elect a prime minister and the government.

"Everybody would finally understand who is responsible for what," explained Mr. Kuchma of his proposed Constitutional changes.

During his state of the nation speech on April 15, given before a session of the Verkhovna Rada, Mr. Kuchma further expounded on his vision of political reform in which the Parliament would become the dominant political force in Ukraine. He suggested a political round table take place to further discuss his ideas and expressed hope that all the political elements of society could agree on the reforms that were needed.

The day before the four leaders of the opposition to President Kuchma had issued a statement criticizing the political reform initiatives as nothing more than an attempt to promote an authoritarian state leadership.

Opposition leaders said that central to their concerns was to prevent the president from achieving his goals for both a bicameral Parliament and the holding of parliamentary and presidential elections in a single year.

While not disagreeing with the need for political reforms, the four leaders - Yulia Tymoshenko of the Tymoshenko Bloc, Petro Symonenko of the Communist faction, Oleksander Moroz of the Socialist faction and Mr. Yushchenko of the Our Ukraine Bloc - said their objectives were diametrically opposed to the results sought by Mr. Kuchma.

Mr. Yushchenko was a bit more accommodating in comments he made after the state of the nation speech, saying that the president should wait out a process of public debate to determine what type of reforms the people wanted. "The issue of political reforms always tends to exasperate me, especially this idea of 'let's get it done quickly,' " explained Mr. Yushchenko.

As it became obvious that opposition to his bicameral legislature initiative was particularly strong, Mr. Kuchma decided to change certain aspects of the political reforms he was seeking. In a national address on June 19, Mr. Kuchma publicly rejected his initial idea to transform the current Verkhovna Rada into a two-chamber Parliament, to reduce the number of national deputies and to have his political reforms approved by the people via a national referendum.

The Ukrainian president also changed his proposal to the formation of the government, stating that the president could appoint the prime minister from a list of four candidates nominated by the Verkhovna Rada majority. He said the president could also retain the power to appoint the foreign minister and the law enforcement chiefs.

In addition, Mr. Kuchma defended his plan to have parliamentary and presidential elections held simultaneously. Opposition members had immediately noted that this part of his proposal was a flagrant attempt to have presidential elections pushed back from 2004 to 2006 to bring them into line with the vote for Parliament, which would give the president two additional years in office. He said his draft legislation would soon be sent to the Parliament.

Try as the president did, he failed to convince a majority of lawmakers that the revisions he proposed were for the benefit of the country - even after he categorically stated that he would not run for another term in office. On July 10, the same day he made that statement, the Verkhovna Rada failed to gather the 226 votes needed to give initial approval to the president's draft legislation and to be able to send it to the Constitutional Court for review.

Concurrently the united opposition in the Parliament announced that it had developed a parallel piece of legislation that was similar to the president's initiative for the most part, with a major difference being that it fixed in law that elections to Parliament and the presidential chair must continue to be held in different years.

President Kuchma stated that if there was no movement on the political reform issue before the Parliament's summer issue, it would not be possible to approve the needed Constitutional changes, which meant that the system would remain unchanged for the foreseeable future. In the end both pieces of legislation went to the Constitutional Court without parliamentary approval.

Lacking support for the political reforms he envisioned, President Kuchma announced on July 15 that he was preparing to withdraw his political reform bill, while stating he was not prepared to support the opposition's plan. However, the president made it clear the issue of political reform was still alive. He said he merely had withdrawn his own initiative to avoid political "deadlock."

During the parliamentary recess, Mr. Kuchma continued to work on political reform. After a series of meetings with opposition leaders from the left, Mr. Kuchma announced on August 26 that he was ready to support changes that would have the president elected by the Parliament.

The announcement came two days after an Independence Day speech in which Mr. Kuchma stated that he was close to agreement on a comprehensive political reform package that was engineered in cooperation with a cross-section of lawmakers, including some opposition factions.

"For me the main point is to reach agreement on the fundamental issue upon which the reforms were initiated, that is, on the principle that the government would be formed by a coalition of parliamentary factions and groups of lawmakers," explained Mr. Kuchma.

On August 21 National Deputy Moroz, leader of the Socialist faction, said that he had met with the president during much of August and had come to an agreement on a political reform initiative in which parliamentary and presidential elections would not be held simultaneously and the president would not have authority to appoint the power posts in the government, specifically the minister of internal affairs, the head of the Security Service of Ukraine, the chief of the tax administration and the procurator general.

While Mr. Moroz said he was still fighting not to have the president elected by the Parliament, his ally in the opposition, Mr. Symonenko of the Communist faction, said that specific issue was a basis for him now supporting the president's political reform initiative as it stood at the moment.

Meanwhile Mr. Yushchenko of Our Ukraine said he could not support either of the two initiatives put forth by President Kuchma.

One political pundit, Ihor Kohut of the Laboratory for Legislative Initiative, said during a press conference on September 9 that he believed the latest political reform proposal had little chance of being approved by the Parliament. He explained that it was in all likelihood another effort to discredit Mr. Yushchenko, the most popular politician in Ukraine, as well as Ms. Tymoshenko, leader of the eponymous political faction in the Verkhovna Rada, by presenting them as opposed to what looked on the surface to be Constitutional reforms that brought Ukraine a European form of government.

The draft legislation went to the Verkhovna Rada officially on September 5. After 254 national deputies signed a petition supporting the proposed political reform legislation, it went to the Constitutional Court for review on September 9.

Just over two months later, on November 12, the Constitutional Court ruled that the political reforms Mr. Kuchma was pushing were constitutionally acceptable. With 11 of the 18 judges in agreement and only five dissenting, the court stated that a president elected by the legislative branch did not deny the people the right to choose their state leader.

"A change in the process of the formation of state organs is not a violation of the rights of citizens," explained Judge Pavlo Yevhrafov, who read the decision. The court underscored, however, that any constitutional changes could only become effective in 2006.

National Deputy Yurii Kliuchkovskyi, a member of the Our Ukraine faction, said he found it hard to fathom on what basis the judges ruled since Article 71 of the Constitution of Ukraine specifically stated that the president must be directly elected by the people. He said the stipulation fell into a separate group of articles identified as "indivisible," which required a more complex amendment process.

During the time the bill was in review, 60 more lawmakers had signed on in support, bringing the total number of lawmakers ostensibly ready to approve the constitutional amendments to 293, seven short of the two-thirds majority needed to approve changes to the Constitution.

Then, on December 30, Ukraine's Constitutional Court ruled that President Kuchma can run for a third term in office even though the country's Constitution limits a state leader to two terms. The members of Ukraine's highest constitutional authority decided that Mr. Kuchma, who was first elected in 1994, has the exclusive right to an additional term because he was elected prior to approval of the Constitution in 1996.

The decision in part read: "One must understand that the provision applies only to people who are elected to the post of president of Ukraine after the 1996 Constitution came into force."

After reading the decision, Justice Vasyl Nimchenko explained that the court ruled only after extensive consultation with legal scholars at the country's leading law schools. He said that with the enactment of the Constitution in 1996 President Kuchma became an acting president fulfilling his authority as state leader under the terms of the old Constitution. Therefore the time period between 1996-1999 cannot be considered a full term in office under the new Constitution. The Constitutional Court grounded their reasoning in Part 3 Article 103 of the 1996 Constitution, which states that the new Basic Law could not be applied retroactively.

National Deputy Ihor Ostash, a member of the Our Ukraine political bloc whose leader, Viktor Yushchenko, is a likely presidential candidate, called the court's decision proof that the 18 judges were merely the president's stooges.

"This is more proof of the level of democracy [in the court] and the level of democracy in Ukraine in general," said Mr. Ostash according to Interfax-Ukraine.

The lawmaker added that Mr. Kuchma and the pro-presidential forces could be satisfied that the court had recently decided in their favor on three important issues - the election of a president by the Parliament already in 2004; the matter of criminal immunity of the president and the difficult standard for impeachment; and now his right to another term in office.

The October 31, 2004, presidential elections, around which the political reforms were centered, slowly became the main focus of political life in Ukraine as 2003 came to a close.

In November, the first of a series of polls asking Ukrainians their presidential preferences showed that Mr. Yushchenko of Our Ukraine held a comfortable lead among the candidates at around 21 to 23 percent voter support, followed by Communist leader Symonenko at about 12 to 15 percent. However, they also showed that Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych was becoming an ever more popular candidate, climbing steadily in the polls since he came to office from almost nothing to 9 percent voter support currently.

In anticipation of the election campaign season, a group of eight Ukrainian civic organizations announced on October 31 that they would join together to monitor the various campaigns and the vote itself to assure a deliberate decision by voters, free of undue political pressure and falsification.

Representatives of the European Union, NATO and the U.S. had repeatedly stated that the manner in which the presidential elections were held would influence the pace of Ukraine's movement into Euro-Atlantic structures.

At the end of October, Our Ukraine's leader, National Deputy Yushchenko told the press that he had received numerous death threats and had requested state security protection, while also noting that some 40 leading members of his coalition were under law enforcement investigation.

Ironically, exactly a year before the presidential vote, in a harbinger of things to come, perhaps, Our Ukraine members and supporters were harassed and harangued in Donetsk on October 31 and not allowed to hold a scheduled congress.

Afterwards, many questioned why city officials could not control crowds of inebriated students who blocked the paths of busses and barred the delegates and guests - including 12 high-ranking foreign diplomats stationed in Kyiv - from entering the convention hall.

There remained questions also about who ordered and paid for advertising on huge billboards that depicted Mr. Yushchenko in Nazi regalia. In the end, the demonstrators successfully prevented the congress from going forward and forced Our Ukraine supporters to hold an impromptu rally before their hotel.

President Kuchma responded to complaints from Our Ukraine by stating that Mr. Yushchenko and his delegates should have known what to expect when entering into politically hostile territory, especially after criticizing Russia, which many Donetsk residents still held dear, for the events surrounding Tuzla island (see sidebar).

More disconcerting, similar events occurred again on November 9, this time in Mr. Yushchenko's hometown of Sumy, after Our Ukraine and members of other democratic opposition political groups traveled there for a forum of democratic forces.

Attendees said they were subjected to harassment and intimidation tactics, while law enforcement officials stood idly by. In their most serious charge, the representatives of Our Ukraine, the Tymoshenko Bloc and the Socialist Party said individuals lofted fireworks into a crowd that had gathered to hear Mr. Yushchenko speak.

"We are troubled by the use of firecrackers, which we had not experienced previously in any city," explained National Deputy Mykola Tomenko, a leading member of the Our Ukraine faction. "It is scary to think that next time something more serious could explode."

The members of the democratic opposition said that individuals also had pelted buses with rocks and sliced 81 tires. They accused state militia of passively watching as much of the vandalism occurred. Law enforcement officials said they had arrested 24 people.

In response to the demonstrations in Donetsk and Sumy, the Our Ukraine faction blocked the work of the Parliament in the days following both events while calling for official investigation into who was behind the provocation.

On November 13 President Kuchma turned to the Constitutional Court to clarify the conditions necessary in the Constitution before the country's chief executive could dismiss the legislative body. Most political pundits saw the move as a warning to the Verkhovna Rada to get its house in order and get moving with political reforms.

The anti-Kuchma forces across the country were much more sedate in 2003 than they had been in earlier years, although the leaders from that side of the parliamentary bench remained as active as ever.

The largest demonstration held by the anti-Kuchma forces in 2003 occurred on March 9, when up to 20,000 marched in Kyiv on the birthday of Ukraine's National Bard Taras Shevchenko and the second anniversary of a bloody encounter between anti-Kuchma demonstrators and law enforcement officers.

It was a unified opposition that marched that day, with leaders of the four opposition factions of the Parliament leading the demonstrators. Mr. Yushchenko, who had not firmly committed until the last minute did show in the end, although he kept his distance from the Communist leadership that he marched with. During the march, demonstrators again expressed their dissatisfaction with the authoritarian rule of President Kuchma and alleged criminal acts they associated with his heavy hand.

Another 2,000 people jammed Independence Square on September 16, the third anniversary of the disappearance of journalist Heorhii Gongadze. The murder of the young journalist had spurred the creation of the anti-Kuchma opposition amid accusations and revelations heard on recordings allegedly made in the president's office that the president and his associates in the state leadership had organized Gongadze's disappearance and ultimately his death. The decapitated body of the founder of one of Ukraine's first Internet newspapers was found buried in a shallow grave outside the town of Tarascha the first week of November 2000.

The 2,000 people who gathered in Independence Square on the third anniversary since the journalist's death heard National Deputy Hryhorii Omelchenko, the head of the parliamentary ad hoc committee on the disappearance of Gongadze, announce that he had sent documents along with supporting evidence to the Procurator General's Office requesting that it formally open a criminal case against President Kuchma.

Much of the new evidence that seemed to shed a fresh light on the grisly murder of the Internet journalist came from a diary-like set of letters that the Institute of Mass Information, a Ukrainian civic organization, received from Ihor Honcharov, a former special forces official in the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Mr. Honcharov, who had been arrested on charges of corruption last year, was found dead while in pre-trial detention on August 1. Two days earlier, on July 30, he had been hospitalized for what some witnesses said were injuries received from a brutal beating. His remains were quickly cremated by prison officials before an autopsy had taken place.

The documents that Mr. Honcharov had sent to the Institute of Mass Information expressly stated that they should be opened only after his death. When institute officials unsealed the package they found a series of 13 diary-like letters explaining how the elite force that Mr. Honcharov had led a couple of years back, called the "Werewolves," had engaged in kidnapping for ransom and murder for hire, including the death of Gongadze.

On October 24 the Procurator General's office announced that it had arrested Oleksii Pukhach, a high-ranking official in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in connection with the disappearance and death of Gongadze. At the time of the announcement, Deputy Procurator General Viktor Shokin said he was not yet ready to explain how the suspect was involved with the Gongadze affair.

Five days later, however, Procurator General Sviatoslav Piskun and his staff were dismissed by President Kuchma hours after a presidential anti-corruption committee announced that it had found that Ukraine's chief law enforcement official "had committed serious violations of legislation and dishonorable deeds," including charges that he had personally taken over cases that involved large sums of money and then had dragged them out or closed them and that he had spent too much time on self promotion and too little on solving crimes.

At the beginning of the year, a poll developed by the Ukrainian Institute of Social Research and the Social Monitoring Center had revealed that a culture of corruption had settled upon Ukraine.

The report, released on January 15, noted that 78 of the respondents to the survey believed that all or most all government officials had accepted bribes. More than 80 percent stated that corruption was prevalent within the judicial branch of government and 71 percent agreed that most government officials were tied to rackets or the mafia.

Perhaps the most telling statistic was that nearly a quarter of those surveyed - 23 percent - were inclined to accept bribery and corruption as a normal part of everyday life, while 44 percent said they had paid bribes or made gifts of one form or another to government workers in the last year.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, January 11, 2004, No. 2, Vol. LXXII

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