REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK: Now that the campaign is over... (03/26/06)

REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK

by Zenon Zawada
Kyiv Press Bureau

Now that the campaign is over...

Alas, the 2006 parliamentary election campaign has come to a close.

Regardless of the outcome, your trusty Kyiv reporter can already draw several conclusions.

If the much-speculated parliamentary coalition emerges between the Our Ukraine bloc and the Party of the Regions, then President Viktor Yushchenko and his party will lose an immense amount of credibility and support.

The two political blocs have a lot in common: they are full of wealthy businessmen (formerly known as oligarchs), they support free-market economics (for the most part) and they support globalization efforts such as Ukraine's membership in the World Trade Organization.

But their differences in whether to orient Ukraine toward the Russian Federation (Party of the Regions) or the European Union (Our Ukraine) are so large that a coalition would likely keep Ukraine in its current holding pattern and prevent decisive steps in either direction.

As much as I have tried to understand eastern Ukrainians and sympathize with them, they are very misguided for supporting the Party of the Regions, for reasons not related to politics.

In principle, it is simply wrong to vote for people who have flagrantly broken laws while occupying positions of power. When leaders themselves don't uphold a nation's laws, then that's when chaos begins to set in.

When voters decide to re-elect such people to office, they've made a decision to remain slaves to money and power instead of trying to build a fairer and more lawful society.

However, as I recently learned in a visit to Luhansk, eastern Ukrainians genuinely don't believe their leaders have acted in any criminal way. Ignorance is bliss, I suppose.

I understand eastern Ukrainians wanting to maintain close political and economic ties with their neighbor, the Russian Federation. However, their resistance to European integration will only ensure that Ukraine remains a divided and fought-over "borderland" with no firm direction for its future.

Their refusal to get on the bus bound for Europe also ensures that Ukraine will continue to be sliced up, divided and exploited by the world's empires, be it the Russian Federation, the European Union or the United States.

Furthermore, the Party of the Regions lacks vision for Ukraine, and instead thrives on fear and ignorance.

The vast majority of its election campaign, whether in advertisements or campaign speeches, has been based on attacking Viktor Yushchenko and his performance since he assumed the presidency.

At a February press event in which Viktor Yanukovych was supposed to unveil the party's economic strategy, he spent most of his 50-minute speech attacking his political opponents instead, especially Mr. Yushchenko.

This is not only morally weak, as Mr. Yushchenko put it. It is hostile and dangerous for Ukraine.

At the same Party of the Regions event, I approached their No. 2 leader, Nina Karpachova, identifying myself as an "American journalist" and kindly asked her to pose for a photo. Her knee-jerk reaction was to turn her back to me to prevent any photograph. Talk about lousy PR skills. Imagine what her reaction would have been if I had told her I represented a "Ukrainian American newspaper."

As a professional journalist, I am not going to judge an entire party based on a small, insignificant slight. However, let's look at these party's overall behavior and words.

In spite of the millions the Party of the Regions has invested in polishing its image, it's the party's bitter, angry souls that need repentance.

Consider Mr. Yanukovych's comment on March 2 in Kharkiv that "24 days are left and we will once again be masters of our own land and we won't let anyone rule in our home."

"We need power, and we are ready to take it from your hands," he said. "On March 26, we should show them who's the master of our home."

This is the voice of desperation. For decades, eastern Ukrainians were the pride of Soviet Ukraine, embracing the Russian language and culture, working in its productive and relatively well-paying factories, mines and industries. That all came to an abrupt end when the Soviet Union collapsed.

And with the recent rebirth of Ukrainian culture and identity, they now feel like second-class citizens. After mocking "villagers" for speaking Ukrainian, they have become the targets of laughter for speaking such lousy Ukrainian.

As for the Orange split, I can't blame either Mr. Yushchenko or Yulia Tymoshenko. They are both correct in their own right; therefore, I believe the split was meant to happen.

Mr. Yushchenko is correct when he says that Ms. Tymoshenko sometimes puts her own interests ahead of all others, and Ms. Tymoshenko is correct when she accuses the Our Ukraine leaders of engaging in corruption.

It's become a biblical truth among Ukrainians that "Yushchenko's a good man, but it's his circle that's corrupt."

The Kostenko-Pliusch Bloc is just as much to blame for the Orange disunity as Ms. Tymoshenko. Sure, their shade of orange might be deeper than Our Ukraine, and maybe their platform is more Ukrainian. But were their differences significant enough to justify creating a separate bloc that will skim votes away from Our Ukraine? I believe not.

The Kostenko-Pliusch Bloc won't qualify for the Verkhovna Rada and they deserve to fall short for their political miscalculation.

No blame for Orange disunity need go toward the Pora-Reforms and Order Bloc, because I believe Ms. Tymoshenko is correct in assessing them as a political project aided by the Our Ukraine Bloc.

Vitalii Klitschko's name atop the Pora-Reforms list was a brilliant victory. It's a relief that Mr. Klitschko has expressed support for the Ukrainian language, even though he's only started to study and learn it recently.

"The identity of every country is its language," Mr. Klitschko told the Kyiv Post in its February 2 issue. "In France, they speak French. In Spain, they speak Spanish. In Great Britain, they speak English. I think this question must be solved in a very tolerant manner, without forcing it."

At present, there's no legitimate force in Ukrainian nationalist politics, and maybe that's all for the better, given that Ukraine's prime minister, an ethnic Buryat from Russia, speaks better Ukrainian and holds more patriotic views than Natalia Vitrenko, a blue-eyed Kyiv native who prefers to wave the Russian flag.

Oleh Tiahnybok has emerged as Ukraine's leading nationalist. But while he is the only person standing up for lustration of Communists and Kuchmists, he doesn't help the situation by using slurs when referring to Russians and Jews.

The Ne Tak! bloc, a last-ditch effort by the Social Democratic Party to retain its slipping grip on power, will become known as the 2006 campaign's biggest joke, led by the court jester himself, former President Leonid Kravchuk.

In an attempt to change its image, the Kyiv oligarch clan, which includes such warm and cuddly characters as Viktor Medvedchuk and Hryhorii Surkis, has spent millions on a campaign that will likely fail miserably.

Because he's an unprincipled manipulator who has demonstrated that he's interested only in promoting his own business interests, Mr. Kravchuk doesn't draw much attention or credibility from Ukrainian journalists.

It's sad to see how a former president can have such a lack of respect from his own countrymen.

Some things in Ukraine haven't changed - private companies and educational institutions are still pressuring their employees to join and vote for parties on a wide-scale basis. Journalists are still reported to be taking money to promote certain political causes.

But attitudes are slowly changing. For the 2006 campaign, the Party of the Regions made a conscious decision to try and clean up its image and present itself as a legitimate collection of people. Even if it's not reality, the effort demonstrates the party feels it needs to play by Western standards.

So who would I vote for if I were a Ukrainian citizen? The Our Ukraine bloc.

Finally, Ukraine's closed election list system is regression for Ukrainian democracy. Citizens can vote only for a bloc or party, without being able to select a single candidate. Instead, it's the party leadership that selects candidates. Therefore, the Ukrainian voter is instead voting for a clique of party leaders who will then decide on behalf of voters who will represent them in the Parliament.

Additionally, parliamentary representation without geographic demarcations is undemocratic.

For example, a Ukrainian American in the East Village of New York City knows that his or her representative in the U.S. House of Representatives is either Carolyn Maloney or Jerrold Nadler. The East Village is part of their geographic constituency.

However, a resident of Ivano-Frankivsk can't point to anyone in the Verkhovna Rada and say that anyone represents his or her interests.

Ukrainians finally have the will to build a Western-style democracy, and it's unfortunate that they must do it within the framework of an electoral system that doesn't represent them adequately.

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