Kuchma unloved, but still favorite of Ukraine's voters

Kyiv Post, weekly, November 4th, 1999

(Reuters) President Leonid Kuchma, facing a run-off vote against Communist rival Petro Symonenko after the first-round election, has presided over five years of economic decline but vows to press on with reforms.

The former director of the Soviet Union's largest nuclear missile plant will crank up his powerful campaign machine anew for the Nov. 14 vote in a bid to combat widespread nostalgia for the days of the Communist superpower.

"I voted for a better life, for Ukraine to continue its present course", the sandy-haired leader said after voting. "There can be minor deviations but the strategic course should remain unchanged."

But, travelling to some of Ukraine's poorest villages during his campaign, Kuchma appeared to harbour few illusions about his lack of popularity with people eking out existences on $40 or less a month after years of uncertain economic transition.

"I have never been under any illusions about being loved by the people or being loved by my closest circle. I am not that naïve, "Kuchma said in one television interview.

The 61-year -old leader, an advocate of political consensus and cautious reforms, has been portrayed in posters as the candidate of peace and harmony.

Despite his lack of personal popularity, early results from 96.04 percent of ballots cast showed Kuchma in the lead with 36.36 percent of the vote and Symonenko second with 22.32 percent. A runoff is now certain as neither can win the 50 percent of the vote needed to win outright.

Foreign investors, though as disenchanted with his economic record as voters, said they would prefer another five years of Kuchma to a leftist win. Rejecting opponents' allegations that he has manipulated state-controlled media and run a dirty campaign, Kuchma has made the same accusations about his rivals and criticised journalists for spreading dirt about him.

Blaming the opposition-dominated parliament for his administration's failure to pull the economy out of steep decline, Kuchma promised parliamentary reform after the ballot unless Rada deputies formed a pro-reform coalition.

A former prime minister under independent Ukraine's first leader Leonid Kravchuk, Kuchma has also promoted closer ties with Russia. While political and ethnic tensions flared in Ukraine's mainly Russophone Crimean peninsula during the last election five years ago, Kuchma has since then overseen a thaw in relations with Russia and with the Crimean Russian minority.

He can also point to a friendship treaty with Russia, which look effect this year, regulating among other things the status of the former Soviet Black Sea fleet based in the Crimean part of Sevastopol - a major bone of contention.

Despite fears five years ago that he would compromise Ukraine's new-won independence, Kuchma also pushed through the country's first post-Soviet constitution and defended Ukraine's right to strong relations with Europe as well as Russia.

He has rejected invitations to join a Russia-Belarus union as a dead-end choice.

For six years he headed the Yuzmash missile plant in the eastern city of Dnipropetrovsk. He was a virtually unknown parliamentarian when he became prime minister in October 1992.

Born in northern Ukraine's Chernihiv region, he spent much of his early working life as an aerospace engineer at the Soviet space center in Baikonur, now part of Kazakhstan.

Communist chief woos voters with promise of return to past

(AP) The most striking thing about potential next president Petro Symonenko is that there doesn't seem to be any.

In Soviet times, Symonenko made a steady, if bland, career ascending through the ranks of the Communist Party. His record shows few signs of brilliance, or of blunders.

Now, this 47-year-old career communist, with his stocky build and stiff carriage, still looks like a typical Soviet bureaucrat.

Yet, his nondescript functionary style, along with promises to restore a Soviet-type social safety net, apparently spells comfort for millions of impoverished Ukrainians, who have grown nostalgic for what they see as the security of the Soviet past.

Preliminary results from the Oct. 31 election indicate that Symonenko finished second to reformist President Leonid Kuchma, and the two are likely to be headed for a run-off vote.

In his campaign speeches, Symonenko promised to give state support to industries and limit borrowing from foreign creditors, and denounced the influence of "trans-national" corporations. "

He wants to restore heavy government involvement in the economy, return key enterprises to state control, virtually end privatization, and place Ukraine back into a union with Russia and hard-line Belarus.

On Monday, Symonenko told reporters that he would also divide Ukraine's foreign debts into "those that have to be paid and those whose legality should be checked". He hinted at plans to introduce currency controls and "exclude the dollar from domestic circulation."

But Symonenko insists Communists are not to be feared and that their intentions are unfairly maligned.

"Why should the West be afraid of us?" he asked at a recent news conference. "Why do we present a threat?"

Symonenko has a steady following in Ukraine and hopes to capitalize on the shortcomings of Kuchma's five years in office, the rampant bureaucracy and corruption, and the deep post-Soviet economic slide.

A native of Donetsk, a bleak eastern industrial region, Symonenko calls for closer ties between the largely Russian-speaking, pro-Communist east, and the much more nationalist and pro-European western Ukraine.

"Today, like 60 years ago, the Communists have a task of unifying western and eastern Ukraine and removing their artificial confrontation," he said.

Symonenko is short on charisma and generally speaks in a monotone. He is a graduate of a polytecnical college - the type of institution that accounted for perhaps the largest number of college graduates in the Soviet Union.

After working as an engineer for only 14 months at a factory in Donetsk, Symonenko became a full-time Communist in 1975, gradually advancing in provincial party hierarchies.

Symonenko has one major accomplishment to his credit: in 1993, he restored Ukraine's Communist Party, which was banned following the Soviet collapse. The party elected him its leader at the founding congress. But in a country where anecdotes abound about other politicians, little is said about Symonenko.