ANALYSIS: Ukraine's presidential race becomes more and more unseemly

ANALYSIS

Ukraine's presidential race becomes more and more unseemly - to whose benefit?

by Jan Maksymiuk
RFE/RL Newsline

Judging by what is taking place in Ukraine's presidential election campaign three weeks before the ballot on October 31, the chances are very slim that the election will make any positive contribution to the country's political and social stability. In the opinion of a majority of Ukrainian political observers and analysts, these are the most contentious, divisive and dishonest elections in the history of independent Ukraine. Regardless of which of the two leading candidates - Viktor Yushchenko or Viktor Yanukovych - actually wins, half of the country is set to be deeply disappointed and frustrated, to say the least.

As in the 1994 and 1999 presidential elections, Ukrainian voters are also expected this year to display a clear west-east pattern of political sympathies. According to all sociological surveys, western Ukraine will overwhelmingly vote for "pro-European" Yushchenko, while the east of the country will overpoweringly back "pro-Eurasian" Yanukovych. The 10-year rule of President Leonid Kuchma has not diminished the "civilizational cleft" of the country by any meaningful degree; this fact may be seen as one of the gravest failures of Mr. Kuchma's presidential career.

Mr. Yanukovych, who is also prime minister, has clearly indicated that he is not concerned with Ukraine's deeply disturbing political and linguistic division when he announced last month that he wants to make Russian the second state language and introduce dual citizenship in Ukraine. These two proposals - an obvious favor-currying advance toward the Kremlin - in particular, and the eastern Ukrainian electorate, in general, are simultaneously an anathema to voters in western Ukraine. Apart from being politically and socially antagonizing, these two proposals are also highly unrealistic. The issues of state language and citizenship in Ukraine are regulated by the Constitution, and the Constitution of Ukraine may be changed in a fairly complicated procedure only by a two-thirds majority in the Verkhovna Rada, not by a presidential decree.

President Kuchma shrugged off Mr. Yanukovych's populist proposals regarding the Russian language and dual citizenship as mere propagandistic blunders. And he simultaneously poked fun at the prime minister by recalling that Mr. Yanukovych has also promised to build a bridge over the Kerch Strait between Crimea and Russia - a task that, Mr. Kuchma emphasized, is impossible from a "geological point of view" - without having consulted about the feasibility of such a project with specialists. And Mr. Kuchma recalled with near pride that he himself campaigned in 1994 on a platform postulating on raising Russian to the status of officialdom in Ukraine but later backed down from this promise. "The Constitution for me is [as holy] as the Pater Noster [Our Father]," Mr. Kuchma said. "Other comments in this regard are superfluous."

The state-controlled and oligarchic electronic media continue to present Mr. Yushchenko primarily as a radical nationalist, while stressing Mr. Yanukovych's pro-Russian sympathies. As a rule, they provide either positive or neutral coverage of Mr. Yanukovych and predominantly negative coverage of Mr. Yushchenko. Moreover, the tone of election coverage in the Ukrainian media has been set not by some public debate around the political platforms of more than 20 presidential candidates, but by Messrs. Yushchenko and Mr. Yanukovych accusing each other of murderous plots. Mr. Yushchenko accused the authorities of poisoning him, while Mr. Yanukovych counteracted with charges that Our Ukraine supporters wanted to kill him during a campaign meeting in western Ukraine. The language used by Messrs. Yushchenko and Yanukovych as well as by their rivals is often harsh and indecorous.

Mr. Yanukovych refused to take part in televised presidential debates before October 31, and Mr. Yushchenko followed suit. While Mr. Yanukovych's decision is fairly comprehensible - he is obviously not an intellectual and orator - Mr. Yushchenko's refusal is astounding and inexplicable. Given that most electronic media in Ukraine treat him very unkindly, Mr. Yushchenko could use the public debate as a chance to send his election message straight to the electorate, without manipulations and denigrating comments in the media servicing his main rival. Ukraine's election campaign has lost an opportunity to become a little bit more civilized, if one may say so.

This past week added another shameful stroke to the already disgusting picture of the presidential race in Ukraine. Mr. Yushchenko's supporters discovered at several warehouses in Kyiv, according to their estimates, several million copies of posters and leaflets smearing and caricaturizing the Our Ukraine leader as a puppet in the hands of the United States. One leaflet depicts Mr. Yushchenko in Uncle Sam garb with the following: "Are You Ready for Civil War?" Another shows U.S. President George W. Bush's face superimposed on Mr. Yushchenko's with an inscription below: "Yes, Bushchenko!" And the same stock of slick campaign materials included a poster depicting Taras Shevchenko, Ukraine's national poet of the 19th century, with a printed appeal: "Yankee! Go Home!"

Some in Ukraine fear that the 2004 presidential ballot - the first one in which the ruling regime has a genuine democratic alternative in the person of Mr. Yushchenko - may not come to fruition at all. The gloomy picture of the election campaign has spawned a number of more or less improbable speculations and conspiracy theories maintaining that President Kuchma and his administration chief, Viktor Medvedchuk, are pondering a scenario under which the 2004 ballot, due to its dirty character and anticipated falsifications of the vote, may be declared invalid, thus creating a need for a repeat election.

In such a potential repeat election, the adherents of conspiracy theories assert, Messrs. Yushchenko and Yanukovych as the candidates already "used-up" in the previous campaign, will have no chance against a new centrist candidate fielded by Messrs. Kuchma and Medvedchuk (some say, namely, that Mr. Kuchma is the best choice under such a scenario) as the "guarantor of stability" for a society polarized by the Yushchenko-Yanukovych rivalry.

Some of Ukraine's most prominent politicians view such a scenario for derailing the current election as realistic. "There are obvious signs of Ukraine's moral humiliation at a critical level, and the mood of uncertainty and hopelessness is being spread among people in the hope that they will accept the disruption of the election indifferently or neutrally," Verkhovna Rada Chairman Volodymyr Lytvyn commented on September 28. "The artificial polarization of public opinion, the organization of confrontation between regions, the attempts to split this country, the provocation of conflicts between presidential candidates, and the strengthening of mutual distrust among them have become all too obvious."

Mr. Yushchenko, too, does not exclude such a development. "I'm increasingly inclined to think that derailing the election is not just an option, but a working scenario," he said on October 2. "The authorities have definitely gone for the strong-arm electoral option. It may end in falsifications and the declaration that the elections in many regions are invalid."

On the other hand, if the elections eventually take place and put forward a new president, be it Mr. Yanukovych or Mr. Yushchenko, it is not difficult to predict that he will in no way be accepted as the leader of the entire nation. Therefore, the erstwhile political campaign Ukraine Without Kuchma may have a continuation under a new name - Ukraine Without Mr. Yanukovych or Ukraine Without Mr. Yushchenko, depending on the circumstances.

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

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