The Rukh party, which spearheaded demands for Ukrainian independence, is on the brink of a split according to an Interfax news agency report.
The agency reported that in a letter to Rukh’s regional organization in Lviv, the party’s staunchly nationalist western Ukrainian heartland, party leader Vyacheslav Chornovil expressed his anxiety about ‘the imminence of a split prompted by the party’s nomenklatura.’
However, Rukh’s members in Lviv view things differently. According to Yury Okhrymenko, press secretary of the Rukh party in Lviv, Chornovil is merely making empty threats.
‘It is not the split that we are concerned with, it is rather our dissatisfaction with the methods that the party’s leadership enforces,’ he said. ‘We are not trying to say that we are nice and the rest are bad and that’s why we want to separate.’
At their last meeting, Rukh members in Lviv suggested several amendments to the party’s statute, declaring that their aim was to democratize the organization.
‘There have been lots of instances when the leadership’s subjective opinion would win out, especially during the campaign to the parliament in March,’ Okhrymenko said. ‘There are still many things the leadership does without any consent from regional organizations.’
The Lviv Rukh organization is insisting on holding an extraordinary party congress this autumn to discuss the situation and, if necessary, demand fresh elections for the leadership. For the congress to take place, though, the request has to be backed by at least one third of Rukh’s 25 regional organizations throughout Ukraine.
‘We hope one third will back us, but we are greatly dissatisfied with the notion of a closed congress as suggested by the leadership,’ Okhrymenko said. ‘We are a regular public organization, not a secret sect.’
An ideal candidate for the position of the party leader must, in Okhrymenko’s opinion, be able to tackle economic issues.
‘Maybe we have to keep on agitating for Ukraine’s independence, but economic issues are of primary importance,’ he said. ‘The leadership happily talk about the Ukrainian language and national emblems but not about the economy. People want to work and earn money.’
Okhrymenko said there were many Rukh parliamentary deputies who might meet the necessary requirements.
‘If we do not tackle economic issues robustly now we will definitely fail in the next parliamentary elections,’ he said.
In an interview with the newspaper Kievskiye Vedomosti, Rukh’s press secretary in Kyiv, Dmytry Ponamarchuk, said: ‘[Rukh members] in Lviv always try to stand out. In terms of quantity of suggestions they are ahead of all the other regional organizations, but the quality of those suggestions is doubtful.’
Responding to the calls for fresh elections for the party’s leadership, Ponamarchuk said those could be held at the earliest in December of 1999 according to the statute.
‘Chornovil has always been, is and always will be the leader of the party,’ Ponamarchuk said.
