ANALYSIS: Opposition in Ukraine is divided before presidential elections (07/18/04)

ANALYSIS

Opposition in Ukraine is divided before presidential elections

by Taras Kuzio
Eurasia Daily Monitor

One day after the Ukrainian presidential elections officially started on July 3, four major candidates filed their papers with the Central Election Commission. The oligarchic regional clans and political parties of the pro-presidential camp have united behind Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. His own Party of Regions, the "party of power" that dominates the Donbas, endorsed Mr. Yanukovych at its weekend congress in Zaporizhia.

In contrast, the opposition will field three presidential candidates: Viktor Yushchenko (supported by the populist Yulia Tymoshenko bloc), Petro Symonenko (Communist Party [CPU]), and Oleksander Moroz (Socialist Party [SPU]). Will this disunity and rivalry prevent one of the three opposition candidates from defeating Mr. Yanukovych?

Recent elections illustrate the advantages of a united opposition. In Yugoslavia the opposition finally succeeded in defeating Slobodan Milosevic in the Yugoslav presidential elections after a decade of disarray. In October 2000 they overcame their differences and the 18 parties united under the umbrella Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS). Their candidate, Vojislav Kostunica, won 50.4 percent of the vote in the first round. The only major opposition party not included in DOS was Vuk Draskovic's Serbian Renewal Movement. In Georgia's 2003 and 2004 elections, the opposition was less united than its counterparts in Serbia. At the same time, Mikhail Saakashvili's National Movement-Democratic Front, which closely resembles the Tymoshenko bloc, and Nino Burjanadze's bloc, whose position is similar to Mr. Yushchenko's, faced fewer domestic opponents than will Mr. Yushchenko in October.

While the Saakashvili-Burjanadze alliance did not face off against a hostile Communist Party, the Tymoshenko-Yushchenko alliance faces a CPU equally hostile to both the alliance and the authorities. Georgia's Labor Party resembles the Socialist Party of Ukraine, and both stood in the Georgian and Ukrainian elections separate from, respectively, the Saakashvili-Burjanadze and the Tymoshenko-Yushchenko alliances.

Ultimately, the Socialist candidate, Mr. Moroz, will be the kingmaker in this year's Ukrainian elections. Mr. Moroz as a joint left candidate would ensure the Left a place in the second round. Together, Messrs. Moroz and Symonenko are polling at about 23-25 percent, higher than Mr. Yanukovych's 15-17 percent.

The combined Left vote (CPU, SPU and Progressive Socialists) in Ukraine ranges between 30.07 percent at its lowest in the 2002 elections, to 44.50 percent in the first round of the 1999 elections. Mr. Moroz came third in the 1999 elections with 11.29 percent, and the SPU third in 1998 and fifth in the 2002 elections, with 8.56 percent and 6.87 percent respectively.

The CPU has repeatedly shrugged off proposals from the SPU to back Mr. Moroz as the joint candidate of the left. As the "senior" party, the CPU would never agree to back a candidate from its "younger brother," the SPU.

As the sole candidate of the CPU, the uncharismatic and neo-Stalinist Mr. Symonenko is destined to lose any presidential elections he contests. In the 1999 elections, he obtained 22.24 percent in the first round then lost in the second with only 37.80 percent. Most of Leonid Kuchma's 56.25 percent winning votes in the second round of the 1999 elections came from Ukrainians voting against the CPU. Such a negative vote against the Communists would not be possible if the moderate Socialist and derzhavnyk Mr. Moroz were the joint left candidate.

Unable to obtain the CPU's backing for a joint left candidate, Mr. Moroz also refused to follow Ms. Tymoshenko and back the Yushchenko camp. Mr. Moroz was personally angry with Mr. Yushchenko and Ms. Tymoshenko for not supporting compromises on constitutional reforms that Mr. Moroz ended up backing in parliamentary votes in April and in June. If a Moroz-Yushchenko-Tymoshenko alliance had been successfully negotiated, they could have ostensibly repeated the opposition's victory in the 2000 Yugoslav elections in round one. Mr. Yushchenko and Ms. Tymoshenko have a hard core support base of 35 percent. Mr. Moroz's additional support of 8-11 percent, based on his and the SPU's votes in earlier elections, might have tipped the total past 50 percent in round one.

Mr. Yushchenko and Ms. Tymoshenko have not ruled out Mr. Moroz joining them. In a joint appeal, they advised the SPU leader, "Today much depends on you: whether we can achieve that level of unity of all democratic forces of Ukraine" (Ukrainska Pravda, July 2).

The authorities are clearly afraid of Mr. Moroz aligning himself with Yushchenko-Tymoshenko. Last weekend 300,000 fake leaflets circulated in eastern Ukraine and claimed to be "from Moroz." In a new twist, the leaflets accused Mr. Yushchenko of being an "agent of the Kremlin and Russian capital" (Ukrayinska pravda, July 2 and 3).

Like the Burjanadze-Saakashvili bloc in Georgia, the Yushchenko-Tymoshenko alliance will attract broad support from both moderate and populist opposition to the authorities. The Tymoshenko bloc placed fourth in the 2002 elections with 7.26 percent, up from the 4.67 percent obtained by its mother party, Hromada, in the 1998 elections. Support for the Tymoshenko bloc resembles that given to the current Minister of Defense, Yevhen Marchuk, who ran on an anti-Kuchma populist platform in the 1999 elections and placed fifth with 8.13 percent. Mr. Marchuk's 1999 election campaign was backed by the same parties that today are members of the Tymoshenko bloc. Ms. Tymoshenko's alliance with Mr. Yushchenko is already radicalizing his election rhetoric. Mr. Yushchenko's mild criticism of the authorities, despite numerous provocations against him, turned many of his potential supporters away. This was most likely a factor in freezing his support at 21-25 percent since the 2002 elections.

Mr. Yushchenko has abandoned his mild manner. Now he has called for "bandits" to be imprisoned after the elections, re-opening shady privatization deals, eliminating criminal elements from the security forces and taking television stations away from oligarchs. At a July 4 rally in Kyiv, Mr. Yushchenko told the 50,000 participants, "The criminal government is to blame for all of this. Today citizens are not free in their own country, they are unprotected against the whims of the bureaucrats, tax inspectors, militia and the procurators" (yushchenko.com.ua).

With two left candidates standing in October, neither will likely garner enough votes to advance to the second round. This may make it impossible for Mr. Yushchenko to win in the first round, meaning he would be forced into a run-off with Mr. Yanukovych.

This calculation would change only if Mr. Moroz dropped his candidacy and backed Mr. Yushchenko. Alternatively, Mr. Yushchenko's campaign could gather sufficient momentum by attracting members of the ruling elites not enamored of Mr. Yanukovych. In the 1994 elections the incumbent, Leonid Kravchuk, was defeated by the treachery of officials who defected to Kuchma, giving him a 6 percent margin of victory. Will Ukrainian history repeat itself in October?

Taras Kuzio is visiting professor at the Elliot School of International Affairs, George Washington University. The article above, which originally appeared in The Jamestown Foundation's Eurasia Daily Monitor, is reprinted here with permission from the foundation (www.jamestown.org).

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