The
Ukrainian Election that Was Almost Null and Void
By Wolodymyr
Derzko
Before leaving for
Even today, many people are left scratching their
heads and wondering at the choice of the pro-Kuchma camp – Victor Yanukovych, a
two-time convicted felon – as the preferred candidate for president when,
frankly, there were so many other and
better choices, Serhiy Tyhipko, for one.
I recall discussing two potential scenarios with
friends that would explain this puzzling selection: the puppet-president option
and the null-and-void election scenario.
Everyone conceded that former president Leonid Kuchma
was trying at all costs to manipulate the situation in order to stay in power.
Putting myself in his shoes, I reasoned
that he was creating the conditions whereby he would be granted full
immunity from prosecution for all his illegal deeds while in office (as the publicly
disclosed Melnychenko tapes have pointed to).
With a puppet president like Yanukovych running the
country, it wasn’t inconceivable that Kuchma could then be nominated to the
position of prime minister and would retain more power under the new
constitutionally mandated parliamentary-presidential system of government than
he had as president. Thankfully, that didn’t come to pass.
The second scenario, the null-and-void election
option, led to a heated debate and was one that even I didn’t take too
seriously at the time.
According to Ukrainian law, if an election does not
take place – or vybory ne bidbulysia – the incumbent president, in this
case, Kuchma, could retain power for a third term. The plan was to eliminate
the top-two presidential candidates through various means. Entice both pro- and
anti-Kuchma forces into so many countless election violations that the courts
would rule that the “elections never took place” or on the extreme side of the
spectrum, assassinate Yushchenko and blame a lame duck Yanukoych. Again, thank
God neither happened.
On Thursday, November 3, Professor Serhiy Komisarenko,
an eminent Ukrainian biochemist, a former presidential candidate and
On two occasions, both at the Munk Centre for
International Studies at the University of Toronto and later in the evening at
an public event hosted by the Shevchenko Scientific Society, at the KUMF
Gallery, Komisarenko stunned the entire audience with his contention that, in
fact, Kuchma was probably planning to carry out the null-and-void election
option.
Giving former president Kuchma a failing grade for
honesty and integrity, but acknowledging that he is a supreme manipulator of
both people and situations, Komisarenko detailed Kuchma’s plan to assassinate
Yushchenko, remove Yanukovych from the political scene, and to then continue to
rule Ukraine in the autocratic fashion that he was accustomed to.
Komisarenko went on the explain that, as luck would
have it, the dose of dioxin or agent orange
(how ironic that agent orange was used in the attempt to kill the
political leader of the Orange Revolution) administered to Yushchenko, though
it was high enough to kill most men, didn’t have the intended lethal effect.
This was likely owing to Yushchenko’s excellent health and to what he had eaten
at the time of the assassination attempt. It would seem that his love for
caviar saved his life: The fish fats in caviar interfered with the absorption
of this deadly poison.
It makes me shudder to think how close we came to an
election result that most people could not have conceived of at the time and
how Ukraine could have been in a far different place than it is today. But it
goes to show that as in all politics, especially in
W. Derzko works in strategic planning and is an
associate of CERES at the