ZHASHKIV – At mid-morning, a fresh-looking and crisply-dressed Oleksandr Moroz popped out of his Chrysler sedan. The presidential hopeful walked up to a crowd of mostly elderly people waiting to get into a conference hall to see him. He shook hands with some of his potential voters, politely listened to their complaints, gave one or two autographs and proceeded to the hall to give his campaign speech.
The little Cherkasy oblast town of Zhashkiv, only 230 kilometers south of Kyiv, was just the first stop of the day. Other stops included Mankivka, Uman, Haisyn and Vinnytsya.
There are not that many votes to be gotten in any of these places. But part of Moroz’ strategy for winning the presidency – or at least making it to the Nov. 14 runoff election – includes visiting such small towns, villages and less major provincial capitals. Campaigning in the heavily populated industrial centers is difficult for most of the 14 contenders trying to block President Leonid Kuchma’s re-election.
The incumbent enjoys relatively strong support in these areas, where he also exerts strong control over local authorities and vast influence over the media. But if Moroz was expecting to find adulation in Zhashkiv, he didn’t get it. He got larger and more enthusiastic crowds later in the day, but also got green tomatoes thrown at him during the Uman stop.
In Zhashkiv, a group of young men came to distribute leaflets in an attempt to sully the efforts of the Socialist Party leader to project himself as a corruption-fighting Mr. Clean. The handouts pictured Moroz and ex-Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko side-by-side with the caption: ‘Together to a better destiny.’
Moroz opponents accuse him of accepting contributions from Lazarenko, who is in a California jail awaiting extradition to Switzerland on charges of illegally taking more than $70 million out of Ukraine. Moroz denies any connection to Lazarenko. However, as a member of parliament, Moroz abstained during the vote to lift Lazarenko’s immunity from prosecution.
The anti-Moroz leafleteers in Zhashkiv said they supported rival presidential candidate Natalya Vitrenko of the Progressive Socialist Party.
Inside, only about 150 people greeted Moroz at the start of his speech. But the crowd quadrupled as people finished their housework and farm chores and trickled inside. Moroz was introduced to the crowd as ‘the man who didn’t allow the sale of our Ukrainian land,’ but his speech focused on corruption in the Kuchma administration.
‘Anders Aslund, an American researcher, said once that Ukraine is a close joint-stock company, where the biggest shareholders are four clans,’ Moroz started. ‘In truth, there are many more clans than he knows.’
Moroz railed against the alleged corruption surrounding Kuchma, including ongoing financial investigations in Switzerland against Lazarenko and in Belgium against Oleksandr Volkov, the president’s right-hand man.
He talked about the exiled former Ukrainian businessman Vadim Rabinovich, who had been sentenced for 18 years of prison in early 1980s for large thefts and then appointed as a presidential adviser. Earlier this summer, the State Security Service [SBU] banned Rabinovich from entering Ukraine for five years for allegedly doing ‘serious damage to Ukraine’s economy’ and for his suspected ties to organized crime.
‘There are lots of people like this who will answer before the law when the power changes after Oct. 31,’ he promised.
Such is the thrust of the Moroz message: Kuchma is corrupt and incompetent. More in the arsenal: Kuchma mismanaged fuel supplies, creating the mid-summer price hike during the crop-gathering season; and the International Monetary Fund loans have contributed to massive debt burden that will hurt future generations.
‘Every one of you, your children and grandchildren owe $40 to the International Monetary Fund this year. Next year it will be $50 – we are living on somebody else’s money,’ he said.
Then Moroz moved on to his favorite theme, the supposedly nefarious activities of the mysterious Fund for Social Protection headed by Kuchma’s friend and campaign lieutenant Volkov, also a member of parliament.
He told the crowd that the fund has seven people working on Kuchma’s behalf in their area, with salaries of up to Hr 400 – an unthinkable amount of wealth for villagers whose collective farms sometimes delay their tiny wages for months and pensioners who are forced to survive on Hr 42 pension per month.
‘This fund can’t wait to find a poor person that needs help, so go and ask for them for help,’ he urged the crowd.
Moroz claimed that the fund has Hr 1.5 billion on its bank account, which it has collected in just a few months and this money is used to re-elect Kuchma for another term.
He then suggested the government should confiscate the money and used it to pay for pensions, health and education.
Moroz invited written questions from the audience. Many weren’t happy with the answers he gave them.
‘We will go not to the East, not to the West, but upwards, out of this abyss Ukraine is in. Economic integration with Russia is very advantageous for us, but it doesn’t mean the loss of our sovereignty. On the other hand, we cannot do without Western investment, but not loans,’ he said about his political and economic orientation.
He promised to eventually return most of the savings that people lost during the hyper-inflationary period after independence. He also said that he would recover the capital that has been spirited out of Ukraine. But didn’t say how.
‘I know how to return [this money],” Moroz told the crowd. ‘We will create proper conditions for it. The money will be returned, don’t worry.’
Despite his vague answers, Moroz’s speech won a few converts, especially among the older generation.
‘I will vote for either Moroz, or [Communist Petro] Symonenko,’ said 76-year-old Hanna Hudoly. ‘He’s a decent man, not like Vitrenko – a political prostitute.’
Many people in the discussion following the speech called Moroz ‘a good man’ and ‘a worthy candidate,’ but some remained skeptical about his ability to become a good president.
‘He doesn’t have enough character to influence what’s happening,’ said one businessman who wouldn’t give his name. ‘Besides, he is just criticizing everything there is – like they all do, but it doesn’t make it easier for us to live.’
While the Zhashkiv people were still discussing what they had seen, Moroz and his entourage left for Mankivka, another small town 80 kilometers south of Zhashkiv. Neither the team of advisers nor accompanying journalists were allowed to follow Moroz’s Chrysler closely. His press team explained the sensitivity: People see his motorcade and complain that he is just as imperial as Kuchma.
Mankivka residents were more enthusiastic about Moroz than people in Zhashkiv: the little local meeting hall was stuffed with at least a thousand people, many standing in the aisles. Some people picked up free posters saying: ‘Moroz is the people’s president,’ and the Socialist party’s newspaper Tovaryshch.
His speech followed the same structure, although the amounts Kuchma cronies allegedly stole from the state coffers, the energy sector and elsewhere were more generous. ‘I don’t call you to a paradise,” Moroz told an enthusiastic crowd. ‘I don’t promise that on the second day of my presidency things will get better, but I promise that things will change.’
Moroz promised to create jobs for the unemployed, pay pensions on time, return lost savings, make education and medical care free, keep land publicly owned, cut taxes and increase availabilit of low-interest bank loans.
In Mankivka, the question-and-answer period was lively.
When asked to help finance the construction of a church, Moroz said he had no money, but said he could help with other things. ‘I can lay bricks, help carry things and unload trucks, I can do some decent engineering work, but I can’t help with money – I haven’t got any,’ he said.
He also suggested a new job for Kuchma in case he loses the October elections: ‘I think he can be a procurator of [businessman Hryhory] Surkis, following the example of the first president Leonid Kravchuk.’
Apart from a grateful audience, Mankivka offered Moroz lunch in a local cafeteria.
The menu was very Ukrainian, and rather large: a starter of fresh tomatoes and ham, followed by a bowl of borshch and the main course, bitki with fried potatoes. All this was accompanied with mineral water and a traditional bottle of vodka, which stayed unopened on Moroz’ table. The Socialist Party paid for the lunch.
The lunch only took around 20 minutes, and the team continued its journey south to Uman, and then east to Haisyn in the Vinnytsya region, and then on to the oblast capital itself which, with a population of 384,000, was the largest city on the day’s itinerary.
The meetings in Uman and Haisyn were very much the same as the same as the previous ones in Zhashkiv and Mankivka: the same stuffy halls with people lining up to get inside and listen to Moroz; free Tovaryshch newspapers were handed out; passionate condemnation of alleged corruption in President Kuchma’s entourage; and hidden yawns of his guard and accompanying journalists who have heard it all before – many times.
The only interesting development was somebody throwing green tomatoes into Moroz in Uman. Instead of asking his guard to take the man out of the room, Moroz read a poem he had written during a fist fight in parliament. He won over the crowd.
Moroz’s day ended in Vinnytsya, where he attended yet another meeting and made a live appearance on a local television show. He’s got about 11 more weeks of such engagements – 13 if he’s lucky.
