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### Viewing cable 06KIEV1261, UKRAINE ELECTION 2006: WINNERS, LOSERS, TRENDS

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Reference ID | Created | Released | Classification | Origin
--- | --- | --- | --- | ---
06KIEV1261 | 2006-03-30 14:02 | 2010-12-01 21:09 | CONFIDENTIAL | Embassy Kyiv
Appears in these articles: www.spiegel.de

`

    VZCZCXRO7198
    PP RUEHDBU
    DE RUEHKV #1261/01 0891451
    ZNY CCCCC ZZH
    P 301451Z MAR 06
    FM AMEMBASSY KIEV
    TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 8475
    INFO RUCNCIS/CIS COLLECTIVE
    RUEHZG/NATO EU COLLECTIVE

` `

    C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 KIEV 001261

    SIPDIS

    SIPDIS

    E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/30/2016
    TAGS: PREL PGOV KDEM UP
    SUBJECT: UKRAINE ELECTION 2006: WINNERS, LOSERS, TRENDS

    REF: A. KIEV 1186

    ¶B. 05 KIEV 4590
    ¶C. KIEV 1081

    Classified By: Ambassador, reason 1.4 (b,d)

    ¶1. (C) Summary: While the results of Ukraine's March 26
    parliamentary and local elections are not yet final, and
    negotiations to form a majority Rada coalition have not yet
    concluded, it is already clear that the elections highlighted
    a number of winners and losers, as well as trends in
    Ukraine's developing political landscape. Fundamentally,
    voting for the Verkhovna Rada reinforced the results of the
    ultimate Orange win in the 2004 presidential election with
    remarkably similar aggregate numbers: a majority of
    Ukrainians supported politicians/parties with overtly
    pro-Western, pro-reform orientations. The 2006 results also
    confirmed substantial shifts in the electorate from the 2002
    Rada election. Besides Western-oriented, pro-reform
    Ukrainians, winners were, first and foremost, the Tymoshenko
    Bloc (BYuT), and secondarily Party of Regions and the
    Socialists, plus the Democratic Initiatives Polling firm and
    newly empowered locally elected authorities. The biggest
    losers were Rada Speaker Lytvyn as an individual and
    President Yushchenko's People's Union Our Ukraine as a party,
    secondarily Orange splinter forces like Kostenko's Ukrainian
    People's Party, Pora-Reforms and Order (Pora-PRP), and Yuri
    Karmazin's Bloc, as well as pro-Russian hard oppositionists
    Natalya Vitrenko, the SPDU(o), and the Communists. Comment:
    With only five parties in the Rada, and Vitrenko forced to
    reprise her role as a street-protest gadfly, the Ukrainian
    political scene may actually be more stable than many had
    feared leading up to the election, even though the same
    intra-Orange squabbling and Orange-Blue battles are almost
    guaranteed to continue in 2006 and beyond. End summary and
    comment.

    The real winners: Ukraine, those who were on the Maidan
    --------------------------------------------- ----------

    ¶2. (C) While election tables from the 2006 Rada elections
    will show that Regions received a 32-percent plurality, the
    real winners of the March 26 election were Ukraine and the
    Ukrainian people themselves, which pulled off the most
    successful election among former Soviet republics outside of
    the Baltics, along with a majority of Ukrainians who had
    embraced a fundamentally pro-Western, pro-reform future in
    2004 by voting for Yushchenko and then taking to the streets
    to prevent Yanukovych and the Kuchma regime elements from
    stealing victory. Despite incompetence and intra-Orange
    squabbling by the "Maidan" team in office, significantly
    lower growth figures, and disillusionment among ordinary
    Ukrainians in 2005, voters on March 26 delivered a remarkably
    similar percentage of votes to the parties who stood together
    on Maidan as they had to Yushchenko in 2004; just over half
    the voters voted for Orange parties or similarly oriented
    forces. In the December 2004 presidential re-vote,
    Yushchenko received 52% of the vote to Yanukovych's 44.
    (Note: With 99.95 percent of precincts reporting, the Orange
    forces of BYuT, Our Ukraine, and the Socialists will have 243
    seats in the Rada, or 54 percent.)

    Party winner: BYuT
    ------------------

    ¶3. (SBU) Based on expectations heading into the election, the
    runaway winner March 26 appears to be BYuT, which most
    pre-election polls for months had predicted would finish
    third with around 15% of the vote. In the competition for
    Maidan votes, BYuT bested Our Ukraine handily, some 22% to
    14%; BYuT won pluralities in 13 central and western Ukrainian
    oblasts plus Kiev, compared to only three for Our Ukraine.
    BYuT also more than tripled its 2002 Rada vote (7.2%).
    Furthermore, BYuT built organizations in eastern and southern
    Ukraine, often running second to Regions; only BYuT and the
    Socialists can currently lay claim to being truly national
    parties. BYuT may have benefited from being out of
    government, tapping into voter discontent, as well as being
    led by the most charismatic of Ukrainian politicians, Yuliya
    Tymoshenko. But BYuT's effective grass roots organization
    and focused campaign tactics deserve a great deal of credit
    (ref A). That leaves BYuT and Tymoshenko herself
    well-positioned for future election cycles (2009
    presidential, 2011 Rada).

    Secondary winners: Regions and Socialists
    -----------------------------------------

    ¶4. (C) While many Western press stories immediately labeled
    Yanukovych and Party of Regions the "victors" in the March 26
    vote based on their plurality, Regions' success is more
    nuanced. Regions did not aspire to be a national party in

    Kiev 00001261 002 of 004

    this election cycle; instead, as Yanukovych told us in early
    November 2005, Regions was running to protect its base in the
    east and south against the Communists and Vitrenko (ref B).
    Regions ran a well-financed, well-organized campaign,
    successfully consolidating that base, which had largely voted
    Communist in the 1998 and 2002 Rada elections. Regions won
    the nine oblasts plus Sevastopol that Yanukovych carried in
    2004, securing slightly more than two-thirds of the support
    Yanukovych received then. Employing American consultants
    rather than Kremlin operatives to advise it on tactics and
    outreach to the media and Western interlocutors, Regions also
    partially rehabilitated an image tarnished by its attempts to
    steal the 2004 election. Regions' challenge looking forward
    will be to develop a strategy that appeals beyond its base.

    ¶5. (SBU) The Socialists (SPU) can also be considered a
    secondary winner in the 2006 cycle, even if they aspired to
    more than the 5.7% they received in their predicted
    fourth-place finish. The Socialists expanded a nationwide
    party structure and polled nearly evenly across the country,
    the only such Ukrainian political force to do so; they
    confirmed party leader Olexander Moroz's 2004 presidential
    first-round third-place support (5.8%), which pushed them
    past the Communists for the first time as Ukraine's leading
    "leftist" (in traditional European terms) force (ref B).
    While the Socialist niche is modest, it is well-defined, with
    a generally forward-looking, positive political agenda (its
    economic ideas, however, remain antediluvian). The SPU
    succeeded despite that fact that it being in power deprived
    it of the chance to tap into the protest vote, which had
    contributed to the SPU's 6.9% showing in the 2002 Rada
    elections.

    Democratic Initiatives and the Exit Poll Consortium
    --------------------------------------------- ------

    ¶6. (SBU) The widely respected Democratic Initiatives (DI)
    polling firm should also be considered one of the winners of
    the 2006 election cycle. Alone of Ukraine's major polling
    firms, DI captured the crucial dynamic of the campaign end
    game -- BYuT surging, and Our Ukraine slipping -- in its
    final published poll March 10 (note: Ukrainian law bans
    polls two weeks prior to elections). While the Institute of
    Social and Political Psychology of the Ukrainian Academy of
    Pedagogical Sciences showed BYuT ahead of Our Ukraine in its
    final March 10 poll, it did not have a track record of
    previous polls; all other polling firms showed Our Ukraine
    holding onto the 3-4% lead over BYuT it had enjoyed since
    mid-January. Democratic Initiatives combined with the
    Razumkov Center and the Kiev International Institute of
    Sociology to run an exit poll March 26 that accurately
    predicted the final results of the election, within their
    stated margin of error.

    Local and regional elected officials
    ------------------------------------

    ¶7. (SBU) The winner in the Kiev mayoral race, Leonid
    Chernovetsky, shocked everyone in besting not only incumbent
    Mayor Omelchenko but also ex-WBC heavyweight boxing champion
    Klychko, running on the Pora-PRP ticket. Chernovetsky ran a
    stealth campaign which clearly managed to secure a larger
    share of the anti-Omelchenko vote than Klychko.

    ¶8. (SBU) Finally, other winners in the March 26 elections,
    but which received little attention internationally, are the
    oblast, town, and district councils that were elected along
    with mayors. Under constitutional reform and the delayed
    administrative reform, which will serve as a counterpart to
    changes in governance at the national level in Kiev, these
    provincial and local bodies will receive more resources and
    authority in the coming years. The elections under
    proportional representation clarified allegiances to voters
    previously faced with many unaffiliated local strongmen,
    improving accountability; the election also gives the
    councils a clear democratic mandate in negotiating with the
    center, including the unelected governors appointed by Kiev.

    The Big Losers: Lytvyn and Our Ukraine
    --------------------------------------

    ¶9. (SBU) The biggest individual loser of the 2006 election
    cycle was undoubtedly Rada Speaker Lytvyn, whose eponymous
    bloc failed to reach the 3-percent threshold for the Rada,
    leaving Lytvyn out in the cold. Lytvyn's bloc spent more
    money on advertising than any other party but Regions,
    according to official Central Election Commission (CEC)
    figures, and Lytvyn commanded 63 MPs in the current Rada, 15%
    overall. Lytvyn's campaign suffered from fatal flaws,
    however. It lacked any real organization beyond a collection
    of "names" at the national and local district level, many of
    whom were tainted with the Kuchmaist label (note: Lytvyn

    Kiev 00001261 003 of 004

    served as Kuchma's chief of staff prior to becoming Rada
    Speaker in 2002). The Lytvyn bloc had no real message for
    voters, beyond proposing itself and Lytvyn as a "referee" to
    reunite Ukraine between warring Orange and Blue factions. In
    the end, Lytvyn's vote total barely topped 600,000, the
    number of members his party claimed to have.

    ¶10. (C) The biggest party loser was Yushchenko's People's
    Union Our Ukraine (PUOU), the core of the Our Ukraine
    election bloc, which defied pre-election polls to slump into
    third place and below 14% on election day.xxxxxxxxxxxx had told us in late January that
    PUOU's organization was in complete shambles, would stagger
    to the election, and would need to rebuild from the ground up
    afterwards. Pre-election provincial visits confirmed
    xxxxxxxxxxxx gloomy assessment; Our Ukraine had no visible,
    effective organization outside of Lviv and several other
    western provinces, relying primarily on a slick, expensive TV
    campaign and Orange Revolution nostalgia. Voters did not
    respond.

    ¶11. (C) Our Ukraine's disappointing performance -- which has
    been characterized by many as a defeat for Yushchenko -- is
    also a reminder that Yushchenko's electorate in 2004 voted
    for him out of several motivations, not just in favor of
    Yushchenko. One early 2005 survey indicated that only 37
    percent of those who said they had voted for Yushchenko had
    done so primarily because they supported Yushchenko
    personally; 34 percent did so primarily to protest Kuchmaism,
    and 29 percent did so primarily to defend their right to
    choose. PUOU's party leadership is currently dominated by
    the same unpopular Orange oligarchs -- Poroshenko, Zhvaniya,
    Tretyakov, Chervonenko -- who Yushchenko was forced to
    jettison in the September 2005 government shakeup, but who
    still form Yushchenko's "kitchen cabinet." Our Ukraine's
    poor organization for the 2006 election cycle does not bode
    well either for Yushchenko's presumed run for re-election in
    2009 or for the next Rada cycle in 2011, unless it follows
    xxxxxxxxxxxx advice and rebuilds its organization.

    The Orange Splinters - repeating the mistakes of the 1990s
    --------------------------------------------- -------------

    ¶12. (SBU) Two of the more organized party elements of the
    initial five-party Our Ukraine bloc that won a 23.6%
    plurality in the 2002 Rada elections, Yuri Kostenko's
    Ukrainian People's Party (UPP) and the Reforms and Order
    Party (PRP), decided to run independently from the Our
    Ukraine bloc in 2006, primarily because of disagreements with
    Yushchenko and his entourage. In doing so, they repeated the
    mistake both made in 1998, when they ran separately and
    failed to reach the threshold. While both factions will
    enter a variety of city and provincial councils with their
    modified blocs (Kostenko-Plushch, Pora-PRP), their vote
    totals in the Rada race (1.9 and 1.5%, respectively), along
    with that of Our Ukraine MP Yuri Karmazin, who ran separately
    (0.7%), were lost.

    Pro-Russian hardliner opposition - marginalized, for now
    --------------------------------------------- -----------

    ¶13. (SBU) Regions' heavily pro-Russian campaign rhetoric
    (pro-Russian language, anti-NATO, pro-Single Economic Space
    with Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan) undercut the appeal of
    two parties who made the trio of issues the center of their
    campaigns: Natalya Vitrenko's People's Opposition Bloc
    (2.9%) and the Ne Tak! bloc centered around the SPDU(o)
    (1.0%), along with the Communists (3.7%). Vitrenko ran a
    vigorous street campaign, falling just short of the
    threshold. The SPDU(o), which received 6.3% of the 2002 Rada
    vote, bought extensive billboard ads throughout urban Ukraine
    but had no organization or street presence whatsoever. The
    2006 results and disappearance from the political scene
    confirmed the loss that it and its leader Viktor Medvedchuk
    suffered in 2004 as the most reviled force behind the
    excesses of the Kuchma regime. While the Communists will
    have 21 seats in the next Rada sitting, their 2006 showing is
    but a shadow of the 20% they received in 2002. They ran a
    nearly invisible campaign; their dedicated electorate is
    dying off, and Regions has effectively taken the eastern and
    southern anti-Kiev protest vote that voted communist in 1998
    and 2002.

    ¶14. (C) It would be a mistake to write off the pro-Russian
    marginalized opposition completely, however. Vitrenko has
    proven staying power on the streets of Ukraine, with many
    observers suspecting she receives financial support from
    Russia. If Regions ever transforms itself into a more
    Western-looking, reform-oriented force, part of its
    disgruntled "protest" electorate will likely turn elsewhere
    to voice its discontent. With the Communists dying and the
    SPDU(o) disappearing, Vitrenko may well finally make it into

    Kiev 00001261 004 of 004

    the Rada as the next protest vehicle.

    ¶15. (U) Visit Embassy Kiev's classified website at:
    www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/kiev.
    Herbst

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