Volume 11 Number 3

Summer 2002

Constitutional Watch
     A country-by-country update on constitutional politics in Eastern Europe and the ex-USSR

Ukraine - The March parliamentary elections, which left no one with a clear mandate-neither the center-right reformers nor the president's supporters nor the leftists-while keeping in play a number of mavericks, presage the continuation of the country's fragmented and self-defeating politics. Approximately 69 percent of the electorate turned out to choose among nearly 7,000 candidates and 35 political parties or blocs (for election figures and an analysis of the results, see the article by Andrew Wilson in this issue of EECR).

In simultaneous elections for the Crimean assembly, the authorities were rather more successful. Leonid Hrach, head of the local Communist Party who had chaired the assembly since 1998, was aiming for overall control-60 or more seats out of 100 compared to 36 in 1998. However, a powerful coalition of opponents brought him crashing to earth in one of the major shocks of the campaign. The Moscow public-relations men employed by Hrach encouraged him to play the Russian nationalist card, which angered Kyiv. Russian president Vladimir Putin, on the other hand, distrusted Hrach's old-fashioned ideology and links with Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov. In a classic "provocation," Hrach found himself disqualified from the Crimean race for a false declaration of assets. His supporters won only 20 seats (later 28); the rival block approved by Kuchma and the Regions Party led by Serhiy Kunitysn won 39. Three other seats were won by the Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (United) (SDPU[U]), and, despite the lack of any special representation for the Crimean Tatars in parliament, they won seven seats in a divided field. Kunitsyn was duly reelected chair of the local Council of Ministers, and Hrach was replaced as chair of the assembly by Borys Deych, a member of the Regions Party.

The new Verkhovna Rada (parliament) assembled in Kyiv on May 14. In sharp comparison to 1998, when months of deadlock forced President Leonid Kuchma to rule by decree, it took only two weeks for the Rada to elect a new leadership troika. The various opposition parties proposed the Communist Party's Adam Marty-niuk as chairman (he had been deputy chairman in 1998-2000), with the former presidential representative in parliament Roman Bezsmertnyi and Yuliya Tymo-shenko (leader of the eponymous Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc) as his deputies. On May 24, however, the trio received only 149 votes, with the Communists seemingly succumbing to official pressure to back out of the deal-not even standing behind their own Martyniuk.

Instead, on May 28, despite their relatively poor performance in the original elections, the propresidential For a United Ukraine (FUU) and its allies won the three main positions in parliament. Volodymyr Lytvyn, head of the presidential administration from 1999-2002 and head of the FUU campaign, was elected chairman. His deputies were Hennadiy Vasyliev of the Regions Party and Oleksandr Zinchenko, deputy head of SDPU(U).

The opposition cried foul and claimed the parliamentary voting made a mockery of the electorate's verdict. Lytvyn only won the 226 votes necessary for control when seven members of center-right Our Ukraine, led by former prime minister Viktor Yushchenko, were persuaded to break ranks, along with several independents and two Communists. The seven defectors from Our Ukraine were promptly expelled from the party. The only compensation for the opposition was to receive control of 20 out of 25 parliamentary committees (ten chairs went to Our Ukraine, six to the Communists, and two each to the Socialists and the Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc). FUU took four, and SDPU(U), one.

A second victory for the establishment parties was apparent when they were able to ensure at least the short-term survival of Anatoliy Kinakh, Yushchenko's successor as prime minister. On July 11, the Rada voted by 259 to 4 to delay voting on Kinakh's governmental program until completion of the annual budget in the fall (once such approval is granted the Rada is barred from expressing no confidence for twelve months). The Rada faced more problems, however, in agreeing on its legislative agenda. The Tymoshenko Bloc insisted on including a bill to impeach the president, resulting in deadlock on June 20. The measure was largely symbolic: 150 votes are necessary to place the issue on the agenda-which Tymoshenko did not have since Yushchenko (and probably the Communists) were lukewarm about the idea.

The Gongadze affair continued to rumble on (for background, see Ukraine Update, EECR, Vol. 10, No. 1, Winter 2001). An FBI investigative team left Ukraine in frustration after its April 8-15 visit had failed to produce any new leads. Few observers were surprised when the lawsuit of Lesiya Gongadze, the missing journalist's mother, against former prosecutor general Mykhaylo Potebenko for his failings in the case was thrown out by the Pechersk District Court in Kyiv on May 30. On the other hand, on June 13, the General Prosecutor's office admitted an important defeat by announcing it would suspend investigation of its case against the exiled whistleblower in the Gongadze affair, Major Mykola Melnychenko, after two requests for his extradition had reportedly been turned down by the US.

Melnychenko was also instrumental in breaking the Kolchuha scandal. The fugitive security officer released the tape of a conversation, made on July 10, 2000, between Kuchma and Valeriy Malev, head of the Ukrainian arms-export monopoly Ukrspetseksport. In defiance of UN sanctions, the president supposedly approved in secret the export, via Jordan to Iraq, of the $100 million high-tech Kolchuha radar system-the pride of the Ukrainian arms industry and potentially lethal against the American and British planes policing the no-fly zones over Iraq. Malev had died in a mysterious car crash just before the elections on March 6. His replacement, former defense minister Valeriy Shmarov, appointed on June 13, raised few expectations that heads would roll in the company.

Melnychenko gave information to the US Justice Department in San Francisco, on May 9, and, at a talk in Washington, DC, on May 21, he accused the former head of the Security Service, Leonid Derkach, and his son Andriy of involvement in the Kolchuha affair. He accused them, as well, of having a long history of links with Iran and Iraq, and even of arms sales to the Taliban. The Rada took some of the accusations seriously, and, on June 19, deputies voted for a formal investigation of Derkach's activities.

Allegations also surfaced, in an official Dutch report on the Srebrenica tragedy, that the Ukrainian State Security Services, working with Iran, had helped arm the Bosnian Muslims in 1994. After Greece and Turkey, Ukraine was said to be the third biggest supplier. This time, rivals attempted to implicate the former security chief and current head of the National Security Council, Yevhen Marchuk, in the sales. On July 11, the Rada set up an informal commission to investigate all aspects of possible illegal arms sales.

Potebenko's resignation as chief prosecutor was confirmed on April 29. He had been elected on the Communist Party's list but did not last long in their ranks; he was expelled for voting for Lytvyn as parliamentary chairman. On July 4, he was replaced-with surprising speed-by Sviatoslav Piskun, the former chief of the tax-police investigation department, who was widely seen as loyal to Kuchma. Nevertheless, the Rada voted 347 to 8 to approve his appointment, with only the Tymoshenko Bloc and the Socialists abstaining. Our Ukraine split, with 73 voting in favor. Piskun's first step was to approve an investigation into the collapse of the Ukraina bank in July 2001; and, on July 12, he promised to reactivate the Gongadze inquiry.

In a somewhat analogous personnel change, former Rukh leader and the original head of the parliamentary commission on the Gongadze affair, Oleksandr Lavrynovych, was appointed minister of justice on May 7. He had served as Kuchma's state secretary in the Ministry of Justice since July 2001.

Despite the changes in the prosecutor's office, some controversial cases against the regime's opponents continue. Andriy Shkil of the ultranationalist group UNA-UNSO, who was elected in a Lviv constituency in March, was freed from jail on April 12, after a year awaiting trial for his alleged role in the anti-Kuchma disturbances in Kyiv on March 9, 2001. Nevertheless, thirteen of Shkil's UNA-UNSO colleagues remain in jail.

After her election success, charges against former businesswoman and former deputy prime minister Yuliya Tymoshenko and her husband Oleksandr were dropped on April 30. (For the original charges, see Ukraine Update, EECR, Vol. 10, No. 1, Winter 2001.) However, on June 3, Tymoshenko's father-in-law, Hennadiy Tymoshenko, and three other managers from her former company United Energy Systems (UES), were arrested in Turkey. The Ukrainian prosecutor had been pursuing them for some time on charges of concealing $182 million of earnings in 1996-97, when both Tymoshenko and former prime minister Pavlo Lazarenko were at UES, and of organizing a $2.25 billion gas fraud in the late 1990s. Nonetheless, the Rada rejected Deputy Prosecutor Mykola Obikhod's appeal, on June 5, to continue the investigation.

The temporary arrest of opposition journalist Oleh Liashko, editor of the newspaper Svoboda, in Cherkassy in April, confirmed that other old habits of oppression die hard, as did the loss of a broadcasting license for the Kyiv-based television station UTAR, which did not always toe the official line in the election campaign. Eyebrows were also raised when the head of the Ukrainian National TV Company, Andriy Teshchenko, was found dead, apparently by his own hand, on May 31.

Ukraine made some key foreign policy moves after the elections. On May 23, the Council of National Security and Defense announced its intention to draw up "a long-term strategy, at the end of which Ukraine should join the collective-security system on which NATO is based." Several reports predicted that Ukraine would announce its intention to join NATO at the important Prague summit in November and to announce the necessary transitional measures. Ukraine's heightened ambitions were given a cautious welcome when NATO head Lord George Robertson, as head of a North Atlantic Council delegation, arrived in Kyiv on July 9; however, Robertson warned that membership was at least five years away. Ukraine's hopes were embraced rather more warmly at the summit of ten East European aspirant countries in Riga, on July 5-6.

On June 11, the National Security Council decided on appropriate rewording for the 1997 National Security Concept. Ukrainian sources also implied that the NATO commitment would mean the 1997 agreements, granting the "foreign-based" Russian Black Sea fleet a twenty-year lease in Crimea, would have to be renegotiated. Most importantly, however, the recently announced 2000-2005 State Program of Armed Forces Development and Reform was not thought to be up to the necessary task of modernizing Ukraine's armed forces. The recent air show disaster did nothing to alter that perception.

Once reported to have said, "Europe is closed for us now," Kuchma used his state-of-the-nation address to the Rada, on June 18, to reassert Ukraine's "European choice." Citing EU membership as a feasible long-term goal, he promised that Ukraine would meet the standards of the acquis communautaire by 2011. The Socialists and the Tymoshenko Bloc boycotted the proceedings, questioning the president's right to speak for the nation. EU leaders were also unlikely to respond with enthusiasm and, just over a month later, at the Copenhagen summit, called for "further reforms." Kuchma's first significant diplomatic trip in 2002, in April, took him to Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan.

Preliminary results, released in June, of the December 2001 census (Ukraine's first since the Soviet census of 1989) showed a colossal drop in overall population from 52.5 to 48.4 million. Twelve years of economic crisis have had the result that the same percentage of people-33 percent-still live on the land. The disproportionately elderly population is 54 percent female.

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