Words can scarcely describe Leonid Kravchuk’s disappointment at not being re-elected president in 1994. Kravchuk, who had had his hand shaken by the likes of Helmut Kohl and Bill Clinton (the latter even offering him a job of press secretary at one point), was let down by the ignorant Ukrainian voter.
The morning after election day, rumor had it that his plane was being warmed up on the Borispol tarmac. His chagrin was so great that he disappeared from the public eye for three full days.
Kravchuk was able to calm down only when the official ceremony certifying Leonid Kuchma the winner took place.
The two shook hands, and Kravchuk’s relief was evident. In the old Soviet days, this was certainly not the way one dealt with opponents. ‘Makarovych,’ as he is affectionately but wryly referred to, doubtless decided then, if he had not done so earlier, that democracy is a good thing.
So the irony of his latest move could not have been lost on Kravchuk when he joined forces last week with Yevhen Marchuk, a potential presidential hopeful in 1999. Though first on the Social Democratic Party’s list, Kravchuk was clearly paving the way for Marchuk, nominally in second place.
Whether he had subscribed to the dictum of ‘Do unto others as they have done unto you’ or not, Kravchuk has finally moved on from the persona of an ex-president languishing in Parliament to serious politics. Though the resources Marchuk can muster are difficult to estimate, there is vague agreement that the former head of Ukraine’s successor to the KGB could not have failed to prepare himself for the day when he would have to stand on his own. One telling factor is Marchuk’s role in the Den newspaper, which is run by his former press secretary.
Den is financed by a foreign investment of over $3 million from Joint Venture Consultants, Ltd., a U.S. company based in Virginia.
Yet it seems as though Marchuk’s greatest strength is that his weaknesses are not recognized. He is not an orator. His name is far from a household word. Instead of seeking publicity, he seems to avoid it.
This is doubtless the result of old habits. Politics in Ukraine are still largely characterized by back-door deals and agreements cut with the powers-that-be.
Few free marketeers are active in the swiftly evolving political market.
As for Kuchma, the weakness of his position is far more evident than Marchuk’s. The communists have toiled long and hard in eastern Ukraine to lay the blame for the country’s ills at the president’s door.
In western Ukraine, Kuchma has never been accepted as ‘one’s own’ the way Kravchuk was.
Kravchuk, after all, was born in the western Ukrainian region of Volyn and spoke Ukrainian beautifully. Kuchma, on the other hand, cannot avoid his image of a ‘muzhyk’ and learned his Ukrainian on the job.
What is more, Kuchma lacks an organizational base.
He has failed to adopt as his own the crystallized ‘party of power,’ the People’s Democratic Party. Although he is identified with the ruling elite, Kuchma cannot rely on the party which represents it, which anyway is still in its infancy and is headed by Anatoly Matvienko, a politician with presidential aspirations of his own.
The Presidential Administration has the looks of an outfit in complete disarray. No policy initiatives are forthcoming. Despite many promises, the president has repeatedly put off signing the new election law. With less than two years remaining until the presidential election, Kuchma seems like a man with no sense of direction.
The chaos is so evident that, less than a year after he fired him from the post of head of the administration, Kuchma has taken Dmytro Tabachnyk back into the fold as a consultant. The reason for this is that, his disavowals to the contrary, Kuchma’s presidential campaign in 1994 was a one-man show, run by Tabachnyk.
In his desperation, Kuchma even suggested this past summer that the general elections be put off for a year, a statement he was forced to retract.
Kuchma could, still, of course, pull a ‘Yeltsin.’ That is, he could sink massive government funds and other resources into getting himself re-elected. Doubtless this is what he is counting on.
Yet here the ghost of Kravchuk returns to haunt him. When Kravchuk launched his presidential re-election bid in 1994, he counted on the huge government apparatus to pull him through. Instead, the central government proved inept while local governments, particularly in the east, betrayed him, ‘gave him up,’ in Ukrainian slang.
The president’s one loyal ally, his long-time personal friend Volodymyr Horbulin, has taken on more and more responsibilities through the National Security Council, which he heads.
Yet Horbulin is not the man to save Kuchma’s game. For Kuchma, disappointment is in the cards, which is not a surprise given the deck he has been playing with.
(Ivan Lozowy is executive director of the Institute of Statehood and Democracy.)
