As what some have labeled the dirtiest election in Ukrainian history lurches to completion, the budget candidates are finally falling by the wayside.
On Oct. 31 most Ukrainians will vote for one of the five leading candidates: the incumbent, a former spy master, an old Socialist, a communist party boss, and a doctrinaire Marxist.
No one knows who actually will lead this country of 50 million into the next millennium.
But no matter who winds up in charge for the next five years, one hard fact of the Ukraine’s political future is already clear: the president will not be running the country alone.
The Kuchma team:
new faces, old deals
The Kuchma machine offers voters, loudly and in most media, a long list of the incumbent’s accomplishments over the last five years. But the present administration hasn’t achieved unchallenged dominance of Ukraine’s key provinces, and the cash-generating capacity that go with them.
That’s more than a little peculiar. In 1994 Ukraine’s outlying regions, much like Russia today, wobbled on the edge of autonomy as central authority imploded.
But by ruthlessly yanking on the levers of state coercion – the police man, the tax inspector, the judge, the commando squad with Kalashnikovs, and especially the regional political boss – the Kuchma administration reversed the trend. Today, Ukraine’s central government is all-powerful, political observers here say.
But having won that power, Kuchma will have to repay a lot of political favors.
‘There is absolutely no way, if he gets re-elected, that Kuchma will be able to act independently in his second term,’ said Volodymyr Malenkovych, political analyst and journalist. ‘He is building up political debt now… If he becomes president, his first job will be repaying it.’
Andriy Derkach, already one of the administration’s brightest, most intelligent young men, is considered to be among the first to cash in on a Kuchma victory. The son of Leonid Derkach, head of Ukraine’s State Security Service, Derkach the younger split high government positions with lucrative pipe and metals trading for most of the 1990s, his official biography notes. Born deep in Kuchma turf in Dnipropetrovsk, Derkach has been an assistant to Prime Minister Valery Pustovoitenko.
But also, and far more important for short-term career enhancement, Derkach has headed up an effective re-election campaign for Kuchma in Ukraine’s big cities for the last few months, Zerkalo Nedeli newspaper reported.
‘He [Derkach] will certainly have an important job in the next government,’ said Malenkovych. ‘He has the money … and he has the right connections.’
That kind of plum won’t cost Kuchma overly; a good government job with prospects for a better one is often enough to satisfy an ambitious young fellow.
But more seasoned and serious Ukrainian political players want their favors returned the old-fashioned way: in cash.
Kuchma’s financial backers are Ukraine’s richest men. They include Hryhoriy Surkis, boss of the Slavutych trading empire; Ihor Bakai, national gas and oil monopoly head; Oleksandr Volkov, oligarch and Kuchma re-election campaign chief; and Viktor Pinchuk, a major commodities market player and close presidential ally through Kuchma’s daughter, Olha Franchuk.
These magnates own abiding interests in – almost literally – every valuable sector of Ukraine’s economy: energy, steel, grain, chemicals, and media.
Kuchma victory will be pay-off time. But already, the pie isn’t big enough to satisfy all the appetites.
‘The Kuchma team is already … fighting over the spoils,’ Malenkovych said. ‘The country isn’t rich enough to make all of them happy.’
The Central Core: Marchuk, Moroz
Originally, they pitched themselves on the same ticket. But now the remains of the Kaniv-4 political alliance are fighting for votes just like every one else.
‘And if by some miracle they make it into government,’ said Malenkovych. ‘That will just add more interest groups that will want something from their candidate.
Oleksandr Moroz heads up a giant pyramid of subordinates and allies, mostly in the Kharkiv, Cherkasy, and Zhytomyr regions. Mostly, they are the rural and industrial poor, working in state-owned enterprises for salaries not paid on time. But Moroz is not just attracting the downtrodden vote, analysts say.
‘It’s an interesting mix [to whom Moroz is beholden] said Mykhailo Pohrebynsky, who heads the Ukrainian Institute of Conflict Studies.
‘First the old nomenklatura, pensioners and the [urban] unemployed … and of course the people who helped him organize his campaign … but also businessmen lacking close links with the Kuchma administration, and thus much poorer for it.’
From a Kuchma point of view, that’s the down side of running an economy of 50 million citizens like it was his very own missile factory. The president’s commercial allies have profited mightily from Kuchma’s protection, but the antagonism of those who lost in that competition is difficult to overestimate.
‘People like [media magnates Mykhailo] Brodsky and [Vadym] Rabinovych, they dislike the president and his team intensely,’ Pohrebynsky said. ‘No one really knows to what extent they’re supporting a Kuchma opponent, never mind which one. But the result is that Moroz is an alternative to Kuchma, and he will attract financial support from those hostile to the president.’
In Ukraine, things other than money and votes can assist a candidate. One of the most important, at least to hear them tell it, is access to and support by the country’s massive law enforcement structure: cops, judges, and secret police.
A long-time intelligence operative, Yevhen Marchuk can count on timely inside information delivered by Ukraine’s old boy spy network, most political analysts believe. In Ukraine that can translate into useful political things like early warning of a government raid or some dirt on an opponent.
But even in the murky spy world, some things are crystal clear.
‘He [Marchuk] has many friends, especially in [Ukraine’s] south,’ Pohrebynsky said. ‘I give him almost no chances to get in. But if he does, he will be obliged to very many intelligence colonels.’
Red and Redder: Symonenko and Vitrenko
They trumpet mutual hostility, but Petro Symonenko or Natalia Vitrenko, Ukraine’s Communist Party boss and Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine [PSPU] Chairwoman respectively, both freely admit they are good Marxists.
And a good party member always can tell the difference between election rhetoric and political reality, analysts say.
‘A practical approach is a basic part of Marxist doctrine,’ Pohrebynsky said. ‘If either [Symonenko or Vitrenko] becomes President, I see cooperation between their camps as quite possible.’
Both appeal to a similar electorate: retirees and unemployed industrial workers irate at having to live on $20 a month, and yearning for the glory days of the Soviet Union.
In his run at the presidency, Symonenko has regularly downplayed himself as a candidate, selling himself as merely the chairman of a fraternal Socialist organization.
‘We do not need a cult of personality,’ Symonenko told a crowd in Odessa in September. ‘We are the Communists, each member equal, and working towards a common goal.’ Still, some comrades are more equal than others.
One of Ukraine’s most committed Communist Party members is Heorhiy Kriuchkov, card holder since 1951. Aged 70 and the party’s acknowledged ideological leader, Kriuchkov has led the Communist attack on the Kuchma administration’s limp fight against corruption. He could be Symonenko’s prime minister or secret police boss, analysts note.
‘The doctrine specialist will get the critical job,’ Pohrebynsky said.
According to Communist bylaws, a party congress held after the election will decide which Communist would become which minister, assuming the Communists take power.
Even better for red hopes, more than a few Communist members could take high government positions, even if Symonenko loses.
Hands down, in terms of charisma and using it shift voter opinions, Natalia Vitrenko dominates her opponents.
Not just. Her campaign organization is a one-woman show, her party little more than a cheering section. Vitrenko’s right-hand man, Volodymyr Marchenko, would certainly become an important government official if Vitrenko were elected; not bad for a former electrical equipment technician.
But Vitrenko has no staff out of which to build a government, analysts say.
‘No one knows where Vitrenko would get cadres if she were elected,’ Malenkovych said. ‘I doubt she has much of an idea either.’
Chronically poorly-financed, the Vitrenko election bandwagon is built on grass roots nation wide; mostly old, sometimes young, but always fed up with the state of Ukraine today.
They might even make her president. But few Vitrenko faithful are likely government employees.
‘So after an interim period in which most Kuchma appointees were thrown out on the street, she would likely turn to the Communists for experienced personnel, especially in subordinate positions,’ Pohrebynsky said.
