Collective farms' feudal lords auctioning off their influence
his race for Parliament in a Khmelnytsky Region district in western Ukraine. Now the director of the mighty state-owned Ukragrotechservis enterprise faces a real fight for re-election.
Although Bortnyk's company still controls supplies of fuel and machinery to collective farms all over Ukraine, he has been challenged in his 189th election district by a regional representative of another state-owned agricultural supplies firm.
That the elections in rural Ukraine will turn into a spending spree by candidates bidding for the allegiance of farm bosses is a verity for everyone here who knows that Leonid Kuchma is not someone from a neighboring village and that the Communists no longer rule the country. The voters are certainly long past keeping track of candidates or caring which one is elected. 'I hear on the radio: 'Vote for [ballot] Number 27, vote for Number 27.' The next day I hear: 'Vote for Number 23.' Which number is right,' asks 74-year-old pensioner Anastasiya Ponomarenko from the village of Pluzhne, which is attached to the 189th district. 'Who can tell me?'
Collective farm chairmen, that's who. The highest and absolute authority in each village, the farm bosses can make or break candidates running in their district. And they often threaten to break any underling foolish enough to ignore their preference, making a mockery of secret balloting.
By some accounts, that's how it was in Pluzhne in 1994. '[The chairman] told me: 'You vote for Bortnyk or you won't be paid',' said one collective farm employee who asked not to be named.
It doesn't take much more than that to persuade peasants who have no job options beyond the collective farm to toe the line. If additional inducements are needed, collective farmers who have not been paid in cash for six to 12 months are reminded that it is the collective farm chairman who doles out commodities like sugar and grain that have replaced cash in the newly-feudal rural economy. The lack of alternative employment forces collective farmers to remain silent even if their boss pays them with grain priced at almost twice its price in the market. Pluzhne residents console themselves with the fact that overpriced grain as compensation still beats the Colorado potato beetle insecticide handed out in lieu of salaries last month to the employees of the machine repair shop in their village.
The extent to which collective farm chairmen can determine their employees' voting preferences has already become a major concern for election observers, at least for those monitoring the campaign in the western part of the country. 'Almost every party official I've met has said they are comfortable in the cities, but are worried about villages,' said Daniel Ebert of the National Democratic Institute, a U.S-funded group monitoring the election.
The parties fear they will be robbed of votes because neither they nor nonpartisan groups have enough election monitors to send into the countryside. In their absence, local election committees staffed chiefly by close allies of local chieftains will be able to produce the results their bosses want.
Election fraud may not even be necessary given the abiding cynicism that prevails these days among village residents who have seen their living standards plunge and have lost virtually all hope in change for the better. In the face of such pessimism and mistrust, few candidates are likely to generate the enthusiasm needed to buck the wishes of men who apportion sugar.
'Why am I supposed to vote for any of them if I haven't received my pension for three months?' said Mariya Vasylivna, a Pluzhne pensioner who did not want to give her last name.
A few weeks ago, campaigners for one of the candidates running in the 189th district had to beat a hasty retreat from Myakoty, a village three kilometers from Pluzhne, after visiting a local school.
'They had to return to their huge six-door black car soon after they arrived,' said Myakoty resident Volodymyr Zborovsky, recalling the account he received from his daughter Maryna, an 11th-grader whose class the campaigners visited. 'The children simply told them their promises are lies, they do not trust them and are not going to tell their parents to vote for this candidate.' Even some collective farm chairmen prefer to keep the election at arm's length. 'People come to me and ask: 'For whom should we vote?' But I'm not going to tell anyone this time,' says Mykola Mykhaylovsky, a collective farm boss in Dobryn, another village in the 189th district. 'I told people to vote for Bortnyk four years ago, only to hear complaints later: 'Whom did you tell us to vote for? He hasn't done a thing for us.' '
Mykhaylovsky is the exception, not the rule. Most collective farm chairmen prefer to help a 'money sack' the derogatory Ukrainian term for a rich businessman – into Parliament in exchange for supplies of gasoline or a few tractors for their farm and substantial money rewards for themselves.
Pluzhne residents acknowledge most of them voted for Bortnyk four years ago because they believed his promises to do many good things for the village. He has not been seen here again since.
That record casts a pall over fresh promises to improve roads and build a gas pipeline to their village. But local residents know that contempt for and by voters is no obstacle on the road to Parliament.
