LVIV – The Western Ukrainian city of Lviv greets its visitors with the coziness of its restaurants, and its slow pace of life – a drastic contrast to the capital where the dirty tentacles of politics reach into everybody’s life.
‘There’s very little apparent campaigning taking place [in Lviv]. It seems like it’s still three months before the election rather than three weeks,’ said Graham Elson, a long-term observer in Lviv for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
It’s not just the campaign that’s quiet: Many of Lviv’s 1 million city dwellers are not interested in participating in the election because they believe that their lives are touched more by the local bosses than anyone from the capital.
‘We won’t even go to vote because it will make no difference for us,’ said Hannna Brynytska, a worker at one of Lviv’s idle plants.
Brynytska is one of 20 Lviv natives who currently live in tents in front of the building where the regional administration and the mayor’s office are located.
Brynytska and her colleagues from the local Kineskop plant – which used to make television sets but is now idle – demand that the regional authorities accept the 1994 decision of a local court ordering the plant to give the workers apartments for their past work. According to their contracts with Kineskop, plant workers who had worked for at least three years at various construction sites are entitled to apartments.
The group of 20 plus people has lived in tents since Aug. 16 and said they will continue to do so until they get what they have earned. But they said the central power could do little to solve the problem.
‘When [President Leonid] Kuchma came to Lviv, they parked minibuses in front of us so that he couldn’t see us,’ said Olha Shukaylo, another picketer. ‘And then all these telegrams we have sent to Kuchma, they didn’t work either.’
The picketers believe that eventually their problem will be solved locally, even though the latest move by the local bosses was to appeal the Lviv court’s decision to the Supreme Court.
The 20 picketers, as well as many other people in the city, believe that the choice has already been made, and little can be done to affect Kuchma’s inevitable re-election.
Following this logic, some have started using the election campaign for their own benefit: Some exchange their support of certain candidates for personal favors; others are trying to earn some money; and still others are hoping to further their careers.
The dean of Lviv University became Kuchma’s proxy in Lviv for the election. For this, Kuchma promised – and granted – his institution the status of ‘national university.’
This slight change of name in reality means that cash from state budget earmarked for the university goes straight from the Cabinet into the bank account of Lviv National University. Before, that cash first went through mediators such as the Education Ministry. In a nutshell, it means there’s more cash than before.
Lviv Mayor Vasyl Kuibida is also trying to benefit from the election campaign. Earlier this month, he jumped out of a plane with a parachute as a part of his campaign to support incumbent President Kuchma.
Local analysts say that Kuibida would like to head the upper chamber of Ukraine’s parliament if the president’s initiative on its creation ever takes off. He is banking on the possibility that, by helping Kuchma during the election, he will increase his chances of getting the job.
Although relatively quiet, the local campaign is bringing some money to local businessmen who benefit from advertising and poster-printing contracts. Also, local students and others are paid to distribute posters and leaflets, stick them on walls, and remove those belonging to opponents.
The incumbent president’s ads and posters can be seen in many shop windows, but there are few for other candidates.
Staffers from the Reform and Order election headquarters said that up to seven tons of new pro-Kuchma leaflets arrive in Lviv every day. But that doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll get the votes.
The city, which has consistently supported nationalistic candidates and parties throughout all eight years of independence, is a stronghold of Yevhen Marchuk. The former KGB general was supported by several right-wing parties popular in Western Ukraine, such as the Ukrainian Republican Party.
He’s also supported by some extreme Ukrainian nationalists, some of whom even work for his campaign in the West.
‘I’m for Marchuk because he is the only one who can return us to the nationalist social state,’ said Roman Koval, a young man who gave out leaflets on behalf of Marchuk and said he worked in the candidate’s local headquarters.
‘We are for a strong hand; I don’t have anything against someone like Hitler,’ he said.
Koval explained that all of his family have had extreme nationalistic views ever since the Soviets took away his grandfather’s land and property in Lviv. He fled to Germany during the World War II, but was brought back by the Soviets, Koval said.
‘When he was coming back home he was crying and saying he would rather work in the German drudgery rather than in the Soviet paradise,’ he said.
Apart from Marchuk’s supporters, Lviv hosts a reasonable number of people who are ready to vote for Socialist Oleksandr Moroz, who is perceived to be ‘a decent man,’ although from the leftist camp.
Lviv residents have traditionally voted for the national democratic parties and candidates since 1991, but this time the vote’s split.
One local journalist told a story about an acquaintance who sought advice about whom to vote for. She told him that he should vote for whomever he liked.
‘So, it’s OK to vote for Moroz then?’ he asked. He received a positive response and happily said he would go and tell his friends, too.
‘People are forced to make strange choices,’ said Serhy Smyrnov, a campaigner for the Reform and Order Party, which allies itself with the arm of Rukh headed by Hennady Udovenko.
Some people still will traditionally vote for Rukh candidates Udovenko and Yury Kostenko, but there are too few voters in Lviv to significantly boost the sagging popularity ratings of either candidate.
Separatist sentiments are also brewing in Lviv and Western Ukraine. According to Smyrnov and other politically active people from Lviv, the idea of catching momentum.
‘People think if Crimea has extended rights as an autonomous region, then why shouldn’t Halychyna – which constantly votes contrary to the rest of Ukraine – have the same,’ he said.
Smyrnov added that this idea is becoming popular among businessmen, who would rather deal with local tax and other officials than national ones. The locals are already familiar – and much cheaper to deal with.
