Few notice as ex-premier slips in, out of Donbas region
KRASNODON, Ukraine — In this dusty, decaying eastern Ukrainian city got a splash of new decor: Little posters of presidential candidate Yevhen Marchuk were slapped to their aching sides.
On the advertisements and in a speech that day, the former prime minister promised to bring law, order and justice to Ukraine if elected president.
Not many people, however, heard his message in the heavily populated Donbas region – not in Krasnodon, nor in the other cities he visited over the weekend, including Ugledar and the major population centers of Donetsk and Luhansk. Oddly, that was by design.
Whether it is because of his years in the Soviet KGB, or as head of its successor offshoot in post-independent Ukraine, Marchuk appears to be running for president in obscurity that borders on secrecy. Even as the nation’s prime minister for a year until mid-1996, he was known for secrecy until – like so many others who held the post – he fell out of favor with Kuchma.
The posters promoting his candidacy in Krasnodon, a city of 54,000 people, made no mention of his appearance at a local meeting hall. Only about 120 people heard his pitch, which was in Russian. And most of the guests were specially invited from the coal mines and other local businesses.
His traveling aides, moreover, were secretive about the identity of his campaign advisers. And the 58-year-old candidate himself – who is running without any party affiliation – didn’t show a lot of interest in mingling with the common folk. It was as if it didn’t matter. And maybe it doesn’t.
Marchuk is one of the four candidates who have united to join forces and block President Leonid Kuchma’s re-election bid.
Unknown still is which of the four men – Marchuk, former parliament speaker Oleksandr Moroz, current parliament speaker Oleksandr Tkachenko or Cherkasy Mayor Volodymyr Oliynyk – will be anointed to carry the anti-Kuchma banner.
Nor have the pact’s participants told the public how they will choose, preferring backroom political intrigue instead.
On his first stop in Krasnodon, Marchuk said the four candidates working together will be successful in stopping Kuchma from winning a second five-year term.
‘By uniting, we have ruined a myth that Kuchma is going to win by all means,’ he said cheerfully. ‘His administration is spreading rumors that the president will win even if they have to forge the election results. With four of us together, we can block any fraud.’
Marchuk went on to criticize Kuchma and his supporters for what he called strong-arm tactics in his re-election drive: intimidation of plant directors, teachers and other publicly financed workers; threats of lawsuits and tax inspections; and demands for campaign assistance.
Marchuk alleged that all state officials in Kyiv and in the regions are involved in the election campaign, and are still being paid salaries from the state budget, which is illegal.
‘All of this cannot be left without our attention and without an investigation. We will find ways to deal with everything and they will have to answer before the law,’ he promised.
Marchuk charged that Kuchma is afraid to have a fair and honest election because he is afraid he would lose. ‘This is why the three of us [Moroz, Tkachenko, and Marchuk] offered everyone to sign a Fair Elections Act, and that’s why the president was so nervous about it,” Marchuk said. ‘And the next day he let off the whole artillery of controlled mass media to discredit those who had signed this agreement.’
Kuchma’s spokesman, Oleksandr Martynenko, denied all allegations and demanded proof. ‘He has to name concrete people, and if this person does something apart from his job, we’ll hold an investigation,’ he said. Martynenko also denied that Kuchma uses state-controlled media off to attack other candidates. Attacking Kuchma, however, was not enough for Marchuk.
The challenger, of course, said that he holds the keys to a brighter tomorrow. When power changes hands, he said, the economy will start getting better because politicking will come to an end.
The audience in Krasnodon pressed him for details. Marchuk promised to remove the Hr 3 billion pension back log in six months, find shelter for 60,000 homeless children in three months, get rid of organized crime and return savings lost to trust companies in the early years of independence.
Marchuk promised clean, efficient, professional government. He promised that he will invest in jobs and education, would give tax holidays to employers and better integrate Ukraine into Europe.
‘But before that, we need to fulfill the potential given to us by the markets of the Commonwealth of Independent States,’ he added.
Many people liked Marchuk’s message, but were frustrated when he rushed off in his Mercedes afterwards without talking to people face to face.
‘I liked him, he talks business,’ said Oleksandr Hmyrya, deputy director of an idle military plant. ‘With people like him, Ukraine would soon get back to its feet.’
In Luhansk, Donetsk and Ugledar, it was more of the same: Small talks with specially invited audiences, plus a smattering of local media attention. In the two days the Post traveled with Marchuk, he didn’t have a single large open meeting with people from the streets.
Marchuk’s spokesman Anatoly Murakhovsky said that a part of his campaign strategy is meeting with leaders of public organizations, parties and regional mass media that support him, communicating with them exclusively, and letting them disseminate the information further.
To a group of military officers in Luhansk, Marchuk naturally stressed the need for a strong defense and to restore prestige to military duty.
‘The profession of defenders of motherland will become most prestigious in Ukraine,’ Marchuk said. He also spoke about the miserable state of Ukraine’s military forces and ways to make them better.
‘It’s possible to restore the military-industrial complex, especially those parts of it that are capable of making weapons that could be sold abroad,’ Marchuk said. ‘Weapons are a hyper-profitable business.’
Marchuk then dashed off to Donetsk, arriving the afternoon of Aug. 28, only a day after Kuchma left. The visual remnants of the presidential visit were still there: billboards and posters with signs and slogans supporting Kuchma’s re-election bid.
‘If we win together, everybody will win,” one slogan promised. It had Kuchma’s signature on the bottom, reminiscent of the propaganda of the late Brezhnev era in the Soviet Union.
By contrast, Marchuk’s itinerary in Donetsk was low-key and relaxed: He laid flowers on a memorial to coal miners killed on the job, held a news conference attended by five adoring local journalists, and strolled around the city’s main square. There, people were drinking beer and celebrating two holidays: Miners’ Day and the 130th birthday of the city.
In Donetsk, Marchuk and his team broke a little from routine and joined the crowd. The candidate even bought a beer. But few people recognized the ex-prime minister and former head of Ukraine’s Security Service, known as the SBU. That is not a good sign for a presidential candidate.
The relatively few who did recognize him seemed stunned that he was in their midst, especially after seeing the closed-off roads and triple lines of guards that surrounded Kuchma along his campaign route the day before. Some just stood and stared. Others found the nerve to come up and complain about delayed payments of wages and pensions.
On Aug. 29, Marchuk’s schedule was even lighter than the day before: he went to Ugledar in the Donetsk region. He talked to some local big wigs and laid more flowers in honor of killed coal miners.
Then he backtracked to Donetsk and broke off from accompanying reporters by telling them that he needed a rest.
