Words Give Way to Weaponry During Presidential Campaign

With President Leonid D. Kuchma facing 14 challengers, Ukraine’s third presidential race in eight years of independence was bound to heat up in the weeks before the Oct. 31 election.

After months of mudslinging, pundits wondered what heavy artillery the candidates were reserving for the final showdown of this country’s nastiest campaign.

But the military metaphors gave way to real weaponry last week when two grenades exploded at an election rally for radical leftist Natalia Vitrenko, injuring the candidate and 32 others, and a political battle that had been merely dirty appeared to have escalated into a bloody war.

“People were expecting the worst, and it happened,” said Serhiy Makayev of Kiev’s Institute of Sociology. “But such misfortune no longer surprises anyone.”

What was surprising was how quickly the alleged perpetrators were arrested. Although more than a dozen public figures have reportedly been the targets of assassination since 1996, no assailants have been apprehended.

But according to police, the two Russian suspects detained at the scene of the Vitrenko bombing immediately confessed to getting their orders from a regional campaign aide to Socialist Party candidate Oleksandr Moroz.

Moroz denied any involvement. “The bombs, the orders and the money came from another campaign that’s now shedding tears on television,” he said.

His insinuation was clear. The only party permitted on television, especially on the three national networks, is Kuchma’s.

The hostility between the two men dates to before 1998, when Moroz was speaker of parliament and positioning himself for a presidential bid. After parliamentary elections last year, Kuchma’s supporters blocked Moroz’s efforts to be reelected speaker.

Less partisan observers think the bombers could be linked with any of the top candidates, even without their knowledge.

“Many campaign staffs are magnets for dubious people who are allowed to hang around in case some dirty work needs to be done to distribute anonymous leaflets, spread negative rumors,” sociologist Irina Bikeshkina said. “Not all of these people are controllable.”

With all the finger-pointing, Ukrainian voters might be confused about the bombing. That is, if they got to hear more than one point of view. With TV out of bounds for all but Kuchma, there’s the press, of course. But only 18% of Ukrainians read newspapers.

In the meantime, the government-owned UT-1 station hammered away at Moroz with all the earmarks of an orchestrated smear campaign.

“Who had the most to gain from this?” a UT-1 reporter asked students sporting Kuchma T-shirts at the incumbent’s campaign stop at a shipyard in southern Ukraine several days after the bombing. “Oleksandr Moroz,” they replied in unison. “Only Moroz.”

Running in fourth place in the polls behind Kuchma (25%), Vitrenko (12%) and Communist Party leader Petro Simonenko (10%), Moroz, with 9% of likely voters supporting him, might appear to stand to gain votes if Vitrenko, a fellow leftist, fell out of the race.

“Moroz is too savvy to do something this stupid,” said political commentator Volodymyr Skachko. “This simply increases Vitrenko’s popularity, transforming her into a victim and Kuchma’s main challenger.”

If the bombing was the work of some uncontrollable hotheads, the logic behind using it to discredit the Socialist candidate is difficult to fathom. Before the bombing, nearly all polls showed Kuchma easily beating Moroz--or Simonenko--in a runoff.

Only the vitriolic Vitrenko, who promises to send market reformers to Ukraine’s uranium mines, stood a chance of beating the incumbent.

“The problem,” said sociologist Bikeshkina, “is that none of our politicians believes the polls.”