Ukraine. To which Viktor, the spoils?

An election that will usher in a messy but interesting era

WITH its modern art and bespoke furniture, Inna Bohoslovska's office is a place where you might expect to meet a Californian personal-development adviser, not a Ukrainian politician. Perhaps that is not too surprising, since she also runs a chic consulting firm. And, with the can-do spirit that she brings to her business, she insists that Ukraine can become a European success story, like Ireland.

After co-founding a short-lived political party for the parliamentary elections of 2002, Mrs Bohoslovska was one of a handful of youngish technocrats brought into the government to freshen it up. She quit after briefly running a state committee on entrepreneurial activity because “you can't construct a separate, modern ministry while the rest of the government remains archaic.”

Still, the very fact that Ukraine's politics has room for sharp-minded figures like Mrs Bohoslovska is a reminder that, in Kiev, public debate is in a healthier state than in Moscow, where parliament is close to being a rubber-stamp for the Kremlin.

After the presidential election on October 31st, Ukrainian politics will be even more lively. Whoever wins - Viktor Yushchenko, an ex-prime minister and central-bank governor, or Viktor Yanukovich, current prime minister and the choice of Leonid Kuchma, the outgoing president - it will upset the apple-cart. For a decade, Mr Kuchma has held the ring between oligarchic clans that compete to dominate business and politics. Mr Yanukovich hails from the Donetsk clan. He has little sway over either the Kiev group, led by Viktor Medvedchuk, Mr Kuchma's chief of staff, or the Dnipropetrovsk clan behind Viktor Pinchuk, a businessman and Mr Kuchma's son-in-law. But both bigwigs prefer him to Mr Yushchenko, who has vowed to “end corruption” and send “bandits” to jail.

His words seem to resonate. Even though the oligarchs control all but one of the main television stations, Mr Yushchenko continues to lead: a poll earlier this month by the Razumkov Centre in Kiev gave him 28% against Mr Yanukovich's 21%. Under Mr Kuchma, the economy has recently started doing better - thanks partly to Mr Yushchenko's brief, reformist premiership - but the oligarchs' grip has become ever tighter and more cynical.

In June Kryvorizhstal, a state-owned steelworks, was sold to a consortium led by Mr Pinchuk and Rinat Akhmetov, a Donetsk magnate, in an auction blatantly rigged to exclude foreign firms that had offered two or three times the price. Observers saw a move both to grab state property, and to forge an inter-clan alliance for the period after Mr Kuchma.

This will make Mr Yushchenko's rule, if he wins, difficult - and he knows it. In an interview, he was cagey about plans to hunt the oligarchs. “I don't exclude investigations of the clans behind Medvedchuk or Yanukovich, but the rest of business wants clear rules,” he says. The omission of Mr Pinchuk is a sign that he may want a truce with Ukraine's biggest magnate.

Mr Yushchenko will face another hurdle if the government succeeds in a bid to change the constitution and transfer some powers - such as naming ministers - to parliament. This measure passed a preliminary reading in June. If the government can induce two swing parties, the Communists and Socialists, to give it the needed two-thirds majority in September, the next president's wings will be clipped.

In any case, Mr Yushchenko may not win. Mr Yanukovich will appeal to Ukraine's split personality. His campaign aims to limit Mr Yushchenko to his home base of support in western Ukraine, calling him both a nationalist who will ignore the Russian-oriented part of the country and a western stooge who will alienate Russia. Mr Kuchma, in a bid to curry Russian favour, is tilting eastwards; he has dropped talk of eventual EU and NATO memberships and agreed to let the Odessa-Brody pipeline, designed to carry Caspian oil to Europe across Ukraine, be used for Russian oil instead. Mr Yushchenko tries to be more pro-western, but pressure seems to be telling: once an advocate of keeping Ukrainian troops in Iraq, he this week urged their withdrawal.

Whoever wins, there will be some creative chaos. But compared with the dull authoritarianism of Russian politics, that may not be all bad.

IFES: Electionguide.org: Election authority: Ukraine http://www.ifes.org/eguide/elecauthority/ukraineea.htm

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