Quantity of choices is not a problem in this fall's presidential race. Ukrainians, faced with a slipping economy and a sliding hryyna, will get to pick from nine candidates – including incumbent President Leonid Kuchma – in the Oct. 31 election. Quality of choices is another matter.
Although Kuchma is very unpopular with the electorate, he remains the odds-on favorite to win re-election. Opposition to Kuchma, one of the few so-called 'moderate reformers' in the race, is splintered among a plentiful field of reds and ultra-reds.
The Kuchma rivals' best hopes appear to rest on forcing the incumbent into a Nov. 14 runoff and then uniting behind the lone remaining leftist challenger. Kuchma – or anyone else – could win outright in the first round by getting more than 50 percent of the vote.
Ukraine's choice will be watched internationally. The West, particularly, is interested in whether the country of 50 million will choose a president who moves further from a free-market economy and democracy.
Fifteen nominees handed in the 1 million signatures required to be registered by Ukraine's Central Election Commission. But the election commission certified only nine of them, citing various violations in the signature lists submitted by the other six.
Among those left in the race, Kuchma is currently the frontrunner, according to recent polls. He was also the first candidate to be registered by the election commission, collecting 1.89 million valid signatures.
Kuchma is a former Dnipropetrovsk rocket-plant director who rocketed into the political world after the nation's independence in 1991. He rode a pro-Russian platform to the presidency, defeating Ukraine's first president, Leonid Kravchuk, in July 1994.
Kuchma's re-election strategy is becoming clear: He will rely on state media to lavish attention on him. He will blame the Verkhovna Rada for Ukraine's economic decline and lagging private-market transition. He will use red-scare tactics, stealing a page from the successful 1996 re-election campaign of Russian President Boris Yeltsin.
Among a host of leftist rivals challenging Kuchma will be Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko. As leader of the largest political party in Ukraine, Symonenko can draw from a steady pool of support, especially in eastern Ukraine and on the Crimean peninsula.
Most see Symomenko as lacking charisma. He sees that as an asset.
'We have been accused of a cult of personality,' Symonenko told Den newspaper in a recent interview. 'Now you can consider this problem treated.'
Symonenko wants the state to retain or regain control over major economic sectors. He stands for nationalization of major economic sectors. He says he favors a multi-party system, but one where other parties' programs would be in line with that of the Communist Party.
A third contender is Yevhen Marchuk, who is not affiliated with any political party. He has won support from about a dozen minor political parties across the political spectrum. Marchuk came to politics from the State Security Service, the KGB's successor. He was Ukraine's prime minister in 1995 and 1996. After Kuchma fired him, he became a deputy in parliament. He is considered a formidable campaigner and organizer.
At a recent news conference, Marchuk said he is proud of his work in the Soviet KGB.
'I am not hiding,' Marchuk said. 'I am not afraid of the fact that I worked in the KGB structures because what I did there was done well.'
Verkhovna Rada Speaker Oleksandr Tkachenko is a fourth candidate.
Until the end of May, Tkachenko insisted he would not run. Many observers said he was just bluffing, however, and sure enough he did an about face and declared his candidacy to much fanfare back in early June.
Tkachenko is considered good at forming and breaking political alliances. He also has a tainted past. In the mid-1990s, he was accused of stealing $70 million in foreign loan money through his agricultural company, Zemlya i Lyudy. When the case was under the Prosecutor General for investigation, Tkachenko – at the time the deputy speaker of parliament – managed to have it blocked. In interviews, he has denied any wrongdoing and denied getting anything close to $70 million.
A fifth wheel in the race is Socialist Party head Oleksandr Moroz, whom many see as Kuchma's most dangerous opponent. Moroz spent much time in the public eye as parliament speaker from 1994 to 1998. And, despite his socialist roots, he appears to be more open to the idea of a democratic society and a free-market economy.
'I'm not as red as they make you think,' Moroz told the Post in an interview earlier this year.
Still, Moroz favors a ban on buying and selling agricultural land.
The sixth and seventh candidates in the race come from the divided Rukh Party. Two splinter groups – now known as Rukh I and Rukh II – emerged after the Rukh Party endured a bitter split earlier in the year.
Hennady Udovenko, at 68 the oldest candidate of the bunch, is the leader of Rukh I – the branch of Rukh that is recognized legally. Udovenko is a career diplomat who spent much time overseas dating back to Soviet times. As Ukraine's representative to the United Nations, he served a stint as head of the UN General Assembly in 1997 and 1998.
Although Udovenko's wing of the Rukh has one of the most liberal platforms in Ukraine, Udovenko is not considered an exceptionally strong candidate.
Yury Kostenko leads the other Rukh group. When Kostenko and his group broke away from the old Rukh Party, he lost a powerful party infrastructure that could campaign for him. Now he is only left with his successful record as an Environment and Nuclear Safety Minister between 1995-98, and is performing poorly in the polls.
An eighth candidate and second in popularity according to most polls is Natalia Vitrenko, leader of the Progressive Socialist Party. She is also probably the most radical leftist in the race, a self-described 'true Marxist.'
Vitrenko's platform draws heavily from Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. She got her start in Moroz's Socialist Party, but quit it in 1996 because she felt it was straying from the Marxist ideology. Vitrenko is one of the most charismatic and hard-working politicians on the country's political scene. Her popularity rating lags only behind Kuchma's.
The ninth and last candidate is Volodymyr Oliynyk, the non-party affiliated mayor of the city of Cherkasy, a city of 300,000 people in central Ukraine. He is little known in the Kyiv political world.
Meanwhile, each the five candidates that were rejected by the Central Election Commission are appealing to courts to have the decision of the commission overturned.
