Reformers, Communists Both Claim Victory in Ukraine Vote

Both reformers and Communists claimed victory Monday in Ukraine’s parliamentary elections as unofficial returns from weekend runoffs trickled into the capital. But with 330 of the legislature’s 450 seats filled by two weeks of voting, neither the right nor the left had won a clear majority.

Les Taniuk, a leader of the nationalist, reform-oriented Rukh party, predicted that reformers had captured enough seats to make the new Parliament more constructive than the last one, which made little progress in shifting the country from its Soviet-era ways to modern capitalism. “We see a bloc of up to 170 lawmakers who will support market reforms,” Taniuk said.

That bloc would include nearly 80 winners from national democratic parties of various hues, including 38 from Rukh, as well as a good portion of independent candidates. Many other reformers, including market-minded economists such as Volodymyr Lanovoy and Victor Pinzenyk, ran and won as independents.

Reforms here have been largely stymied by resistance from the old Communist bureaucracy. That resistance remains among lawmakers from the Communist Party of Ukraine, which, together with its socialist and agrarian allies, claimed the largest partisan bloc: 114 seats.

But Taniuk dismissed their importance. “Most of these are old people,” he said. “I don’t think they will have much influence.”

A Western diplomat agreed with Taniuk. “The Communists are more of a regional party, and they realize that,” he said.

Communist victories came mostly from the industrialized eastern region of the country, hardest-hit by Ukraine’s economic crisis. They are likely to deepen the polarization between Ukraine’s pro-Russian east and Europe-leaning west. “These elections are an accurate reflection of Ukraine’s political map at this time,” the diplomat said.

Rukh’s leader, Vyacheslav Chornovil, predicted that a more basic battle confronting the new Parliament will be “the fight over the party of power”--control of the allegiances of the administration officials, industry directors, military officers and others who hold real sway. In Soviet times, they were all Communist Party members. But their current political party affiliations won’t become clear until they are tested.

“We have some things in common with these people,” Chornovil said. “Especially when it comes to preserving our statehood.”

But when it comes to economic reform, other observers predict that at least some portions of the ruling cadre may ally with Communist conservatives.

In the elections, the far-right end of the political spectrum did poorly. Only three candidates from the paramilitary, super-nationalist Ukrainian National Assembly won in the second round.

Running at an average of 60%, Sunday’s turnout for the 350 races was lower than in the first round of elections March 27. But even Crimeans confounded their own separatist president, Yuri Meshkov, who called for a boycott of the elections, by turning out and filling all 10 seats.