A day on the presidential campaign trail with candidate Viktor Yushchenko (09/12/04)

A day on the presidential campaign trail with candidate Viktor Yushchenko

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV OBLAST - For members of the presidential election team of Viktor Yushchenko, August 30 turned out to be a normal day on the campaign trail.

It began with traffic cops pulling the press van over minutes after it had pulled out of the parking lot of party headquarters in Kyiv to inquire where the group was headed after noting that the vehicle had made an illegal left turn. The day ended with members of Mr. Yushchenko's security detail manhandling a member of the Bratstvo Party, which is fiercely anti-Yushchenko, for trying to disrupt a campaign rally by chanting anti-Yushchenko slogans and disseminating flyers critical of the leader of the Our Ukraine political bloc.

In between, it was day on which Mr. Yushchenko espoused a bright future for Ukraine if it succeeded in ridding itself of the current oligarchic leadership and the corruption associated with it, and moved strongly to consolidate democracy, rule of law and free market principles.

In Vyshhorod, a town on the northern edge of Kyiv and one of the first of the day's three campaign stops for Mr. Yushchenko, a high school band played John Philip Sousa music as the Yushchenko motorcade pulled up to the city's central square.

Looking the quintessential politician, Mr. Yushchenko kissed babies and hugged grandmothers as he walked the 200-yard distance from the street to a stage constructed at the site. Dressed in blue jeans and a plain blue, open-collar sports shirt, Mr. Yushchenko ascended the stage and then played to the crowd. He thrust his hands into his pockets, jutted his prominent jaw towards the microphone, shook his head a bit and showed people that he wasn't the dry, intellectual talking head that some made him out to be: "These Vyshhorod residents, they're different. It's a Monday morning, the beginning of the work week, and they decide they want to get together for a talk."

It was all very routine in comparison to other recent Yushchenko campaign events - particularly a campaign swing through southern Ukraine earlier in the month, during which Mr. Yushchenko's campaign team apprehended two stalkers, who turned out to be special agents of Ukraine's Internal Affairs Ministry secretly monitoring the presidential candidate with cameras and listening devices.

That incident was followed by a more serious confrontation the following day when the car driven by Mr. Yushchenko on his way back to Kyiv nearly collided with a tractor-trailer, which had suddenly swerved toward it as the far smaller vehicle approached. Mr. Yushchenko's security staff, following in other vehicles, pulled the large truck over and confronted the trucker, which resulted in a physical altercation. Campaign officials maintain that the incident was a deliberate provocation by state authorities and even suggest it may have been an attempt on the candidate's life.

So the mood on the campaign trail this late summer day - calm and sunny like the weather - was welcomed as Mr. Yushchenko moved across Kyiv Oblast through the towns of Vyshhorod, Borodianka and Irpin, where hundreds of voters greeted the staunchly pro-Western former prime minister. After a short speech and a question and answer period, the crowds in each town received the unexpected pleasure of hearing legendary opera tenor Dmytro Hnatiuk and humorist Anatolii Palamarenko perform.

The talk here in what is considered Yushchenko country was more about how the government had failed Ukraine and Ukrainians rather than the dirty tactics the Yushchenko camp alleges that state authorities are using in working to derail his campaign.

Mr. Yushchenko reminded pensioners in the crowd in all three towns that their monthly government checks were smaller than those senior citizens receive in Belarus, Kazakstan or Armenia. He asked residents whether they understood that the Kryvorizhstal steel company, which had been valued at $5 billion, had been sold to an investment consortium headed by Viktor Pinchuk, President Leonid Kuchma's son-in-law, for a mere $300 million. He asked whether they realized that the Ukrainian telephone giant, Ukrtelekom, valued at $50 million, would probably go for $25 million.

Mr. Yushchenko noted that average salaries in the Baltic states and Poland, which recently entered the European Union, were four times the Ukrainian average, and observed that while in those countries nearly 50 percent of the GDP went through the government, in Ukraine a mere 27 percent had come out of the shadows.

"Let's ask the question: do we lack resources or do we lack a government with a conscience?," said Mr. Yushchenko, who compared the current Ukrainian ruling elite to a Sicilian crime family.

The candidate promised that in the first months of a Yushchenko presidency he would raise minimum pensions and salaries above the international recognized poverty level minimum.

Mr. Yushchenko, who headed the National Bank of Ukraine before becoming prime minister in 2000, also intermixed populist notions with his conservative fiscal policy ideas. While underscoring the need to stop borrowing money from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, he promised that subsidies for mothers with newborns would be raised tenfold.

He took credit for developing the government mechanisms that provided the impetus for the current dynamic expansion the Ukrainian economy is undergoing. However, he said that a hot economy did not mean that everything was as it should be and the country was on its way.

"Today the point is not how strong the Ukrainian economy is, but how the ruling class has benefited from it," explained Mr. Yushchenko. "It is the shadow economy, and it does not allow the average Ukrainian to feel his life is getting better."

He also emphasized that he would guarantee that farmland remained in the hands of the Ukrainian villager for the time being by moving to block a government plan to open up the Ukrainian land market to foreign sales beginning in 2005.

During his three campaign stops, Mr. Yushchenko unwaveringly attacked the members of the current state leadership by name, while also repeatedly referring to them as a band of thieves. He asserted that they had no affinity for democracy and had increasingly moved toward authoritarianism and beyond.

"In the last 12 years we have witnessed the development of a dictatorship. Do you think that [Viktor] Medvedchuk [President Kuchma's chief of staff], [National Deputy Hryhorii] Surkis [a business partner of Mr. Medvedchuk] and [Prime Minister Viktor] Yanukovych along with Kuchma are looking for democracy? No, they are looking for a way to retain power," suggested Mr. Yushchenko.

The presidential candidate rejected allegations leveled by President Kuchma that the Our Ukraine organization, which Mr. Yushchenko heads, was planning ways to politically destabilize Ukraine prior to the scheduled October 31 presidential election. He said the country was already far from stable and that the current low level of pensions, the high emigration rate and the widespread alcoholism in the country attested to such.

Mr. Yushchenko, who is being painted by the political forces of his prime opponent for the presidential seat, Prime Minister Yanukovych, as anti-Russian in his economic and political beliefs, expressly rejected such allegations. He explained that Ukraine could never ignore the territorial giant to its north with its enormous latent economic power. He underscored that Russia is and would remain a strategic partner for Ukraine and that economic trade would remain a central priority.

In Borodianky, south of Kyiv, he told a crowd of up to 500 people, including plenty of teenagers and young adults who applauded heartily: "I am not a pro-American politician, I am not a pro-Russian politician, or a pro-Polish politician, I am a pro-Ukrainian politician."

The head of the Our Ukraine political bloc was less willing to compromise on the issue of the primacy of the Ukrainian language and culture in Ukraine. While noting that there is room for minority rights, including language rights, he asked where the Ukrainian language and culture should find its place.

"If the Ukrainian language were to disappear - the language of Shevchenko, Kotsiubynsky, Franko and Skovoroda - would these lands become richer?" he queried the crowds.

Mr. Yushchenko further criticized the Kuchma administration for politically playing off western and eastern parts of Ukraine in a divide-and-conquer game, while pointing out that it was in contravention to a central policy espoused by his friend and strategic partner, Russian President Vladimir Putin, in his own country.

"You will never hear Putin say the words 'eastern Russia' or 'western Russia,' " noted Mr. Yushchenko.

The candidate called on Ukrainian voters not to remain apathetic regarding the October 31 presidential vote. He asked them to reject pessimistic assertions that authorities "have already decided everything." He pleaded that they not remain passive and indifferent, but realize that their vote could change matters. The presidential candidate also asked that voters not be swayed by bribery, blackmail or other use of illegal administrative resources.

"Whether they give you a kilogram of wheat or a bottle of beer, whether they raise your pension or give you one of those diet aids so popular today - you should take it, it was bought with your money. Then put it aside as you enter the voting booth and vote for change. You will see a different Ukraine, a different government, one that will take care of its people and not only of itself," exclaimed Mr. Yushchenko in Vyshhorod.

Mr. Yushchenko warned, however, that should the Ukrainian voter retreat from the process after simply filling out his ballot on Election Day, he will not have done his civic duty in full. Mr. Yushchenko explained that he wanted citizens to gather at the voting precincts and the territorial commissions as the voting day ended and the vote count began "to help the commissioners count the vote correctly."

He also called on the voters to make sure the territorial commissioners who were appointed prior to the elections were the ones that were in place for the vote count on October 31.

"The members of the commissions should be your neighbors and acquaintances. We must carefully watch to see that they are not replaced," explained Mr. Yushchenko at his last stop in Irpin, a raion center an hour northwest of Kyiv, where he received the warmest welcome in a day of good cheer and hearty applause.

However, in keeping with expectations, a handful of protesters from the Bratstvo Party, a paramilitary extremist group with anti-American leanings headed by Dmytro Korchynsky - which many pundits in Ukraine maintain is financed by Mr. Medvedchuk, President Kuchma's chief of staff - began a very vocal and belligerent demonstration as Mr. Yushchenko's appearance ended. The group had to be physically removed by the campaign's security staff to allow for Mr. Yushchenko's motorcade to leave.

Just another normal day on the Yushchenko campaign trail.

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