The West's learning curve for the countries of the former Soviet block is a steep one. At first privatization was welcomed for privatization's sake. The idea was that a new owner, regardless of previous background, would begin to function as a player in a market economy. Then it turned out that in some countries like Ukraine the new "owners," almost exclusively from the old, communist nomenklatura, were rapacious and oligarchic rather than market-oriented. Their vested interests in monopolies have stymied reform and largely discredited privatization itself.
A similar process of disillusion is taking place in the political sphere. Originally, elections in Ukraine were treated with kid gloves by international monitoring organizations. The very fact of what were seen as "open" elections was greeted as a significant improvement over a totalitarian system with only one candidate for each elected post.
Ukraine's first post-independence elections in 1994, for example,
were pronounced "free and fair" by the OSCE, among others, despite the
fact that their results hardly differed from the elections held four years
earlier, under the Soviet system.
This simplistic approach obscured the complexities of asking voters
to make choices in the face of entrenched interests which dominate society
not very much less than the communist party dominated in Soviet times.
The results were "pre-ordained" because, in most cases, the principal candidate
from the nomenklatura occupied a government post with access to people,
money and the media. Other candidates, in a society without a market
economy, had to do without resources. The results were thus predictable.
More recently, during the 1998 general elections, it was held as
an axiom that a seat to parliament "cost" from one half to several million
dollars. Those who made money from state-granted monopolies or misappropriated
state funds could afford this price. The case of former Prime Minister
Pavlo Lazarenko is a useful indicator of the level of corruption in Ukraine.
Lazarenko, who currently awaits deportation in a U.S. jail, deposited over
250 million dollars in personal accounts in
foreign banks, according to Ukraine's Procuratura and, at one point,
paid 6.5 million dollars in cash for a residence in Beverly Hills. Using
ill-gotten gains to further one's position should be viewed as a logical
choice. The current Chairman of "Naftohaz Ukrayina," the state giant
which distributes gas and oil, Ihor Bakai, reportedly spent close to six
million dollars on repairs and improvements provided free of charge to
voters in the district where he won his parliamentary seat in 1998.
Votes received by candidates entrenched in the small circle of those
with access to power and money have risen to pre-independence levels. Thus,
still in 1996, one of Lazarenko's prot?g?'s, Yulia Tymoshenko, received
91 percent of the vote in a by-election in the Kirovohrad oblast.
Today, Tymoshenko is Vice Prime Minister in charge of the energy sector.
In 1998, the current First Deputy Speaker of parliament Viktor Medvedchuk
received 90 percent of the vote; Hryhory Surkis, head
of the Dynamo Soccer club and its attendant, mammoth business empire,
got 65 percent. Former positions in the communist party beget money;
money begets power, which begets more money, and so on.
Following the general elections in 1998, the composition of the top
parliamentary factions was as follows:
Communist Party - 124
People's Democratic Party - 59 (the "party of power" headed by former
Prime Minister Valeriy Pustovoitenko)
Rukh - 47
Green Party - 26 (half of the faction composed of wealthy businessmen)
"Rebirth of the Regions" - 26 (regional Mafia)
Socialist Party - 24 (basically communists)
Social Democratic Party (united) - 24 (very much Mafia-based, including
Medvedchuk and Surkis)
"Fatherland" - 23 (Tymoshenko's party)
"Hromada" - 21 (Lazarenko's party)
Peasants' Party - 15 (communal farm nomenklatura)
Progressive Socialist Party - 14 (radical communist)
All but two of these factions, Rukh and the Green Party, were comprised
of exclusively nomenklatura candidates in the 1998 general elections. It
is of little use blaming the voters for the results. For starters, in a
democracy the voters are always right. Moreover, voters are unsure
of what reforms mean, except perhaps what they themselves have observed:
"Given reforms, those with the resources get more and more of the same."
The word "privatization" has been twisted in common parlance to
"prikhvatizatsiya" or "grabbing as much as possible." When
provided real assistance such as repairs, packages of food or other goods
by a candidate, voters reason that at least they are getting something
out of the processes taking place around them.
Given their experience, voters believe they have little choice,
even during elections. Ukraine, which did not undergo serious political
changes following independence in 1991, has never had the doors thrown
open to economic reform, as accomplished by the dogged Vaclav Klaus, in
the Czech Republic, for instance. Since economic reform and political
change go hand-in-hand, Ukraine has thus far been unable to initiate a
virtuous cycle of electing new political leaders who begin to open up the
economy.
The real culprit is the state, which was the only means of realizing power and money during the Soviet era, and has largely remained such since the Soviet collapse. What use is there in observing how voters file into a polling station to cast their votes on election day, when, for the past three months, they have been bombarded by the local television and everyone from the town mayor to the local store owner telling them the best candidate is so-and-so, who happens to be from the nomenklatura?
The "statization" of elections in Ukraine reached an apogee during
the presidential elections held in 1999. In order to rescue his presidency,
the incumbent Leonid Kuchma employed a team of managers which pulled out
all the stops. To begin with, local government officials were told
that if Kuchma did not receive the most votes in their district, they would
be replaced. That is a good estimate of the power of the local ruling
elite over the "choices" of the populace. And Kuchma has since delivered
on his threat. Dozens of local administrators have been replace.
Kuchma has gone so far as to recall Ukraine's ambassador to
the United States, Anton Buteiko, since, the votes cast by Ukrainian
citizens serving in the embassy and consulates across the U.S. did not
put Kuchma in first place.
In response, the local officials went to extraordinary lengths to coerce voters. In Kyiv students were called to classes the day before elections and teachers instructed them to vote for Kuchma. In eastern Ukraine militia went door-to-door asking people why they had not voted for Kuchma, a clever ploy designed to catch those who thought voting was anonymous.
The mass media, including formally independent outlets, which depend
on state licenses and a large number of controlling agencies, broadcast
Kuchma on a 25-hour a day basis. For not adhering to this intense
schedule of pro-Kuchma brainwashing, one independent nation TV station
"STB" was forced to sell its stake to "investors" closer to Kuchma.
Since the government is the principal importer of newspaper and
Ukraine's only newspaper print mill is owned by the "oligarch" Hryhory
Surkis, the print media had to toe the line as well.
Precisely because Kuchma was able to rely on those wielding power by coercing, bullying and buying them, he was re-elected by a margin of 20 percent in a second round run-off on November 14 against the leader of the communist party Petro Symonenko. Yet twisting election results means consigning Ukrainians to further decline.
Changes since independence have touched upon details, leaving the
larger picture unchanged. The most basic lesson of democracy, that
of freedom, and that of its corollary - the less state intervention the
better - remain the hardest to learn. If Westerners have trouble
catching up with events and understanding the lack of progress despite
seemingly "fair and open" elections in Ukraine, all the more reason to
suppose that Ukrainians will continue to have trouble in assimilating democracy.