Even before the end of the current presidential campaign it was possible to arrive at certain conclusions about its outcome. I believe that long before its start it was safe to assume who would be on the losing side: all of us, our children and grandchildren, our country, because the next president as well as Ukrainian politicians and diplomats will need years to overcome the consequences of this campaign.
A great many international observers closely followed the presidential marathon, along with observers of the candidates, political parties, and volunteer organizations. At the same time, certain trends were visible in that huge army of observers: Western observers noted a number of transgressions, while those from CIS countries stressed that the elections were democratic. In other words, there was clearly a “vector” among the observers. This was also true of the domestic observers. They pointed to a great many transgressions on the opponent’s part and I personally haven’t heard a single one acknowledge any deviations on the friendly side. So I tried to analyze the campaign from the standpoint of an ordinary voter. I also followed the elections rather closely and would now like to share some of my observations. Let me emphasize that my inferences are by no means to be treated as the absolute truth; they are only my personal views.
The election campaign began long before the official date. In the past decade our electorate has grown accustomed to the president as the all-time star of news releases, with the premier appearing on television several times a month. Half a year before the campaign, the acting premier started appearing several times a day in every news release, and this was described not as canvassing but as media coverage of the premier’s official activities. Even if this were true from the legal point of view, the moral aspect was absolutely clear to the electorate: a single candidate was being promoted. The opposition responded by using every information opportunity to put in a word for their candidate, but the opportunities on both sides were obviously far from equal.
After the official launch of the campaign, the government did not seem to realize that the opposition also meant Ukrainian citizens, and so Ukraine made itself famous across the world by failing to provide equal conditions for all the presidential candidates.
At the nomination stage, the opposition apparently got the better of the government. The latter responded to the opposition’s spectacular and well orchestrated nomination ceremony at Spivoche Pole (Singing Field) by a lobbying “decision made by a group of comrades,” followed by “mass approvals” at the local level, which were carried out in the worst traditions of the Soviet political theater of the absurd. Watching all this, I was amazed to note that this tactic by the governmental campaign architects not only failed to score additional points, but was also driving the candidate into a corner, discrediting him in the eyes of the democratic community. At first I thought these were miscalculations by Yanukovych’s campaign headquarters, but their further actions, a case study of a cynically scornful attitude to the law, convinced me that someone was using the campaign to wage full-scale anti-Ukrainian information warfare meant to discredit this country in the eyes of the international community and to isolate it from the countries of Europe. How could Yanukovych’s campaign architects fail to see that by lauding a single candidate on all television channels on a daily basis they would obtain the opposite result, that the electorate would quickly tire of it, and that it would spark an inner protest? That people would begin to take a dim view of that single candidate? That such an approach would create a situation in which the government-nominated candidate would be unable to win the race by playing fairly? Winning it by underhanded methods would mean isolation in the international arena. All those huge billboards flooding the Ukrainian cities served the same purpose. We all know that such billboards are used here mostly by foreign firms and joint ventures, because Ukrainian businesses can ill afford them. Foreigners doing business in Ukraine know how much they cost, and so do the locals. Therefore, ordinary people are capable of calculating the huge sums that are being spent on this promotional campaign about as well as experts can. The logical question: Why put up so many billboards and cause the man in the street to feel justifiably outraged? Some said it was another foul up by the candidate’s campaign headquarters. I would agree, if not for the existence of similar slip-ups in other canvassing endeavors, for example, putting up posters lauding a single candidate. I watched a scene in an eastern locale: all the commuter trains were plastered with Yanukovych posters, as were public lavatories. I also saw people looking at all this and laughing. In other words, the whole promotional campaign was held on a gigantic scale, without the slightest sense of proportion, and it yielded precisely the opposite results, showing in a most convincing manner for all to see that the laws of Ukraine are written not for the government-nominated presidential candidate. If one considers every such fact individually, it may be considered a miscalculation of the campaign headquarters, but put them all together and they present a picture that clearly shows that someone is trying to discredit this candidate in the eyes of the world and make him unacceptable to the West. This assumption is corroborated by the fact that a month before the elections, Yevhen Marchuk, one of the strongest politicians in Ukraine, was withdrawn from the list of possible government nominees. This man is respected in Western political circles and he was able to conduct negotiations in the most adverse conditions for Ukraine. I don’t know who conceived this idea or who was in charge of the campaign strategy at Yanukovych’s headquarters, but even now it is clear that, as a result of the campaign, all roads leading to cooperation with the West are closed to the government-nominated candidate (or someone closed them for him). I have never opposed cooperation with Russia; on the contrary, I stand for strengthening and in every way expanding contacts with our strategic partner. But it’s one thing when you arrive on a visit to establish contacts as an equal partner and quite another thing when you are rejected by everyone and visit your neighbor, seeking support. In my opinion, the entire campaign of the government-nominated candidate was meant to create precisely this situation.
The tactic of Yanukovych’s campaign headquarters offered the opposition excellent opportunities for counterpropaganda. The opposition’s accusations of the government-nominated candidate using the administrative resource constantly hit home. All the denials of his campaign people only served to aggravate the situation; our citizens clearly saw what was happening and were willing to believe the campaign headquarters that said things they saw themselves. The next aspect of the opposition’s counterpropaganda focused on the information blockade of the opposition candidates. Whereas a legally prescribed timeslot on the air was allocated to every candidate, the rest was used precisely so as to confirm the opposition’s accusations of an information blockade. Under the circumstances, the opposition took no decisive measures to break through this blockade, instead organizing mass rallies in the capital and various regions, thus employing an optimal strategy in the situation that had developed.
As for the alleged poisoning of the opposition candidate, I will not broach the subject on principle. I hope that we will learn the truth eventually. Instead, I would like to say a few words about the incident in Ivano-Frankivsk. I think the authorities were to blame for what happened. They looked the other way when eggs were being hurled at opposition politicians, so why such a reaction to a single egg hitting the government-nominated candidate? After watching the scene in slow motion several times, watching that egg flying through the air and then crashing on impact, I can say that all the stories that were circulated by the premier’s supporters about car batteries, stones, and other blunt instruments could only generate people’s distrust. Everybody saw that egg flying, nothing else, and then you have people representing the government saying that blunt instruments were thrown. How could one believe the government after that? One can only marvel at the enthusiasm with which members of the Yanukovych team carried out actions meant to undermine people’s confidence in those who wield power in this country. In this sense, the company strategy was geared to produce precisely this effect: to make people distrust their government.
I am purposefully refraining from analyzing the opposition’s tactic because the opposition always acts the way the powers that be make it act. If the opposition comes to power, the new government’s image is formed starting from scratch, but if the acting government wins, all its miscalculations and errors are transferred to the future, so campaigning for a government-nominated candidate requires an especially careful and balanced approach. Remember the US president and the speech he made after his re-election? He promised to work to earn and deserve his people’s trust because they had one country.
So how could one build an election campaign in Ukraine based on east-west opposition, a rift, and a portrayal of the opposition as an enemy? Is our opposition not made up of fellow Ukrainians?
Regrettably, I believe that the election campaign was used as a cover for a powerful, anti-Ukrainian informational special operation meant to break up this society, create tensions within the country, and discredit the Ukrainian government before the international community. I don’t know who worked out the campaign strategy, just as I don’t know who hired whom and who paid for this, but it is very easy to see who was the target of this special operation and in whose interests it was carried out.
