aaus-list @ ukrainianstudies.org -- [aaus-list] KUCHMA THE REFORMER?

[Taras Kuzio <t.kuzio@utoronto.ca>]

RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
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RFE/RL Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine Report
Vol. 4, No. 33, 3 September 2002

A Survey of Developments in Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine by the
Regional Specialists of RFE/RL's Newsline Team


IS KUCHMA GENUINE IN HIS POLITICAL REFORM?

Taras Kuzio


 President Kuchma used the
anniversary of the declaration of Ukrainian independence on 24 August
to announce his support for political reforms. How genuine was he?
 Kuchma has always supported a presidential system modeled on
Russia's and has opposed a law on proportional elections. The
highly flawed April 2000 referendum aimed to transform Ukraine into a
presidential republic and create a smaller, bicameral, puppet
parliament. Last year, Kuchma vetoed a law on fully proportional
elections five times.
    Kuchma announced his intention to launch political reforms
because the opposition plans to hold mass demonstrations on 16
September, with Our Ukraine holding a forum of democratic forces the
day before. Worse still for Kuchma, and a sign of the rising public
hostility to his regime, is the decision by the moderate business
group Razom -- the "pragmatic" and "constructive opposition" within
Our Ukraine -- to support a referendum on early presidential
elections. (The speed with which events are moving can be seen in the
fact that a failed referendum drive by Yuliya Tymoshenko in spring
2001 was not then backed by Our Ukraine.) Yushchenko also wrote his
most critical open letter to date to Kuchma on 29 August (see above).
    Kuchma's representative in parliament, Oleksandr
Zadorozhnyy, admitted two reasons for Kuchma's new policies in an
interview in the 31 August-7 September issue of the "Dzerkalo
tyzhnya" weekly. First, "[Kuchma] was forced to move to this
[supporting political reform] because opposition forces in parliament
had adopted as their program the movement toward a
parliamentary-presidential republic," Zadorozhnyy said. Second,
Kuchma had an eye to the 2004 parliamentary elections. Zadorozhnyy
argued that Ukraine has no individual to whom the extensive range of
powers that Kuchma enjoys today could be transferred, i.e., neither
to an oligarch nor to Yushchenko. "That is why these powers require
serious modification," he said.
    A move toward a parliamentary-presidential republic would
reduce the power of the next elected president, which, as polls
consistently show, would be Yushchenko. If the constitution is
changed by the next presidential elections, the parliament, which has
a pro-presidential majority, would elect the next president by a
majority vote, a system in place in Estonia and Moldova. This would
resolve the problem of a pro-Kuchma presidential candidate's not
being subjected to a popular vote and would deal with the lack of any
popular oligarch who could be elected by popular vote as a successor
to Kuchma and would give Kuchma immunity from prosecution after his
retirement. The pro-presidential parliamentary majority would simply
elect one of its own to replace Kuchma.
    In Ukraine, the pro-presidential blocs fought the elections
in support of a presidential system and the implementation of the
April 2000 constitutional referendum. This has now been dropped and
changed five months after the elections when the executive ordered
them to support a parliamentary-presidential system. Lacking any
ideology and objectives other than maintaining power, centrist
oligarchic parties can very easily change their programs.
    Of Ukraine's virtual, centrist oligarchic parties, only
the Kyiv oligarchic clan has attempted to create a functioning party,
the Social Democratic Party-united (SDPU-o) led by Viktor Medvedchuk,
who now heads the presidential administration. The SDPU-o is de facto
becoming the new "party of power" and heads of raion administrations
are being replaced by SDPU-o loyalists. The Popular Democratic Party
(NDP) failed to fulfill this role after the 1998 elections, and For a
United Ukraine (ZYU) disintegrated almost immediately after the March
2002 elections.
    Our Ukraine leader Yushchenko claims that Medvedchuk has
become Ukraine's "Rasputin." The SDPU-o has openly bragged that
it is behind Kuchma's political reforms, working behind the
scenes. Medvedchuk is reputed to be the most intelligent and
"ruthless" (i.e., in Kuchma’s view, the most efficient) among
Ukraine's oligarchs, especially in comparison to the weakness
shown by former presidential administration and ZYU head Volodymyr
Lytvyn. Medvedchuk and Kuchma have a major factor in common: They
both hate Kuchma's enemies, especially Yushchenko.
    The SDPU-o is the only oligarch party that has always
supported a fully proportional election law. Medvedchuk -- the leader
of the SDPU-o, which was the last of the parties that made it through
the 4 percent threshold in the March elections when it won only 6.27
percent of the vote -- is behind the attempt at tampering with the
election results in the parliament by creating what Yushchenko calls
an "artificial administrative [pro-presidential] majority."
    The nine factions from the former ZYU and the SDPU-o that
have created this majority are unlikely to obtain agreement from Our
Ukraine to join it because this would contradict Yushchenko's
long-held argument that a "democratic majority" can only be built
around his bloc that won the elections. In addition, Yushchenko has
ruled out joining a majority "created by the SDPU-o."
    Regardless of the truth behind Yushchenko’s arguments, they
have no resonance with centrist political forces steeped in Soviet
political culture. Such a political culture defines those in
opposition as illegitimate, i.e., "destructive forces"; attempts to
co-opt political groups, trade unions, and nongovernmental
organizations to help "consolidate society"; and still uses the
security service to collect information on the opposition in the same
manner as the Soviet KGB. Such views prefer an authoritarian,
corporatist state and have little to do with a liberal democracy.
    In January 1999, 237 parliamentary deputies voted in favor of
abolishing the presidency, a reflection of how the presidency had
already by then been discredited by Kuchma. Kuchma's political
reforms aim not to replicate this move from three years ago but to
consolidate the former Soviet Ukrainian nomenklatura as the
country's ruling elite and to marginalize the opposition by
ensuring that a safe successor is elected from among the
pro-presidential parliamentary majority.


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