Right-Center Bloc Taking Shape

Vyacheslav Chornovil (Rukh), Mykola Porovsky (Republican Christian Party), Viktor Prysiazhniuk (Peasants’ Democratic Party), Volodymyr Stretovych (Christian Popular Union), and Borys Bezpaly (NDP) took part in an expanded meeting of the Rukh Council.

The presidential candidate will be nominated by a joint convention. According to Mr. Porovsky, most present at the meeting agreed that Ukraine’s current number one banker Viktor Yushchenko would be the worthiest national democratic contender.

Objectively, political blocs and coalitions (both Right and Left) lessen Leonid Kuchma’s chances to get reelected, because shaping coalitions implies agreement and playing by the rules — something the current President does not like. So far, NDP’s participation in the Group of Five looks most enigmatic, because the level of representation is not that of the party leadership. Possibly, it a cautious attempt to create a Right-Center bloc and a weak gesture of NDP’s threatened independence in the President’s address, as indirectly evidenced by People’s deputy Taras Stetskiv’s speech at the election conference of Lviv’s NDP organization. He believes that the party must sign a basic political agreement with a likely presidential candidate, laying down the requirements and obligations to be observed if and when he wins the campaign.

“Leonid Kuchma should be the first to negotiate this agreement with,” stressed Mr. Stetskiv. However, the final decision will be made by the convention’s second round in March 1999. Personally, he thinks that the Right-Center bloc will mainly rely on such strong parties as NDP, Rukh, Reforms and Order, and partially on Hromada (less Pavlo Lazarenko).