Rukh presidential candidate Udovenko ready to step aside for compromise center-right ticket
ntial election amid skepticism that the former foreign minister would gain the support of the center-right bloc Rukh is hoping to lead.
Immediately after Udovenko was nominated, Rukh leader Vyacheslav Chornovil told delegates at the party's annual congress that the choice was negotiable with whatever other parties join the bloc, and Viktor Pynzenyk – the leader of the only party so far to firmly commit to teaming up with Rukh – said the bloc is waiting for National Bank Governor Viktor Yushchenko to announce his candidacy.
In an interview distributed at the congress, Chornovil stressed that the party should remain open after the congress to negotiations on a joint bloc candidate, mentioning Yushchenko as an example of a candidate who ought to be considered if he decides to run.
Some observers said the main purpose of the nomination was to quell speculation about the party's intentions and head off a movement within the party to defy Chornovil and nominate a candidate who might be less willing to step aside in the name of center-right unity.
Indeed, Udovenko gave his audience reason to doubt that he was seriously planning to run. During his turn at the podium to explain his program, Udovenko at times seemed to be stretching for a way to explain his lack of concrete proposals.
'I believe that the [candidate's] economic program has to be developed in cooperation with Rukh and should remain confidential' until it is published, he said.
Many delegates favored the younger and more charismatic former Environment Minister Yury Kostenko, but they were defeated by Chornovil, who used his authority as party leader to control the proceedings and pull the votes for Udovenko.
'I myself was a supporter of Yury Kostenko until a stronger candidate appeared,' Chornovil said.
Kostenko – who, at 47, is 20 years younger than Udovenko – was especially supported by younger delegates. At one point, leaders of the party's youth wing, Young Rukh, got so angry at being denied a turn to speak that they stormed the podium. However, the microphone was turned off before 30-year-old parliamentary deputy Vyacheslav Kyrylenko reached it, and advancing guards convinced him to walk away.
Chornovil asked delegates to discard preparations for a secret ballot and instead hold an open vote. After that motion was approved, Udovenko defeated Kostenko by a margin of 53 percent to 37 percent. In a second vote on Udovenko only, 70 percent of delegates supported him.
Delegates also elected Chornovil as 'honorary candidate' in what Rukh insiders said was a move to ensure that Chornovil represents Rukh in the hoped-for negotiations on a joint candidate.
Kostenko supporters said Chornovil also feared that if nominated as Rukh's presidential candidate, Kostenko would steal the limelight from Chornovil and eventually replace him as party leader.
Observers said that, with Kostenko defeated, Udovenko will lay low while Chornovil focuses on building a political bloc aimed at providing a single right-of-center alternative to President Leonid Kuchma.
'It's not a nomination yet,' Pynzenyk, whose Reforms and Order party has agreed to form an alliance with Rukh, told the Post after giving a greeting speech to the congress. '[The Rukh candidates] can read their programs, but it does not have any legal effect.'
Vyacheslav Pikhovshek, director of the Independent Center for Political Research, said Udovenko's nomination was intended to put down a movement among Rukh's local branches to support Kuchma. Many local Rukh organizations have developed strong ties to Kuchma through provincial administration bosses.
'It's an attempt to show the regional organizations that the party will not support Kuchma, because the pressure from [the local] organizations is very high,' Pikhovshek said.
Pynzenyk said negotiations with Yushchenko continue and hinted that he and Chornovil had met with Yushchenko recently to discuss his possible nomination.
'He has not yet given his final answer, but there is no negative reaction,' Pynzenyk said at a recent press conference.
Yushchenko was also one of several names listed at a press conference after last month's People's Democratic Party congress as a potential alternative to Kuchma. The bulk of the pro-government PDP favors Kuchma, who has been closely tied to the party since its foundation in 1996.
PDP deputy leader Volodymyr Filenko, who also greeted the Rukh congress, said the unification process on the center-right would speed up if Yushchenko agreed to be a candidate.
However, Viktor Lysytsky, Yushchenko's chief adviser, said Pynzenyk and others were engaging in wishful thinking because his boss is too liberal and democratic to be president and is not planning to run.
'Yushchenko is the kind of man who is not attracted by power,' he said. 'To become the president, you need to love power.'
However, Lysytsky wouldn't definitively rule out a Yushchenko candidacy.
'Life is complicated and everything might change in half a year,' he said. 'Why speculate now?'
In recent polls, Yushchenko has generally ranked among the top five potential presidential candidates, along with Kuchma and three leftists: Socialist Oleksandr Moroz, Communist Petro Symonenko and Progressive Socialist Natalia Vitrenko.
Although Yushchenko has said repeatedly he won't run, many observers have said a spate of recent attacks on him by Kuchma is a direct reaction to Pynzenyk's and others' mentioning Yushchenko's name as a potential candidate.
Udovenko, who chaired the U.N. General Assembly from September 1997 until his election to the Ukrainian parliament the following March, is one of the best-known Ukrainian politicians abroad but has little name recognition at home. Since taking a job with Soviet Ukraine's delegation to the United Nations in 1965, he has lived more than half of the past 33 years abroad.
Udovenko countered his image of being out of touch with the lives of ordinary Ukrainians by stressing his origins in rural, eastern Ukraine. He said those origins give him a unique ability among Rukh candidates to win eastern Ukrainian votes.
'I know how to talk with a woman from a collective farm who digs sugar beets and to presidents,' he said. 'If the racists and blacks of South Africa could unite, then [Ukraine's] west and east can too!'
In the March parliamentary elections, Rukh placed first among parties in all of the formerly Polish oblasts of western Ukraine, but did horribly in eastern and southern Ukraine, where the party's Ukrainian nationalist focus makes it very unpopular.
Udovenko was foreign minister from 1994 until his election to parliament this year. He joined forces with Rukh during the campaign for those elections, and was third on the list of Rukh candidates distributed with voter ballots. He now heads parliament's human-rights committee and is a member of Rukh's faction, but he has never joined the party.
