-Caveat Lector-
Joke: It took Capitalism only ten years to do what Communism could not do in
the last Seventy...That is, to make Communism desirable.
Joshua2
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October 29, 1999
Natalya Vitrenko: Fiery Neo-Stalinist In Quest For
Ukrainian Presidency
By Philippe Coumarianos
Natalya Vitrenko, a fiery neo-Stalinist and top challenger to
Ukraine's leader
Leonid Kuchma in next Sunday's presidential poll, is a
political phenomenon that
inspires both fascination and fear.
The only female candidate for the nation's top job, she has
won the enthusiastic
support of millions of voters in this large ex-Soviet republic
with her extreme anti-western views.
A fringe politician in 1996, when she split away from the
moderate Socialist
Party to found a movement she called Progressive Socialists,
Vitrenko has gone
from strength to strength and is expected to gain 20 some
percent of the vote.
As such, she has taken center stage in challenging the rule of
the center-right
Kuchma -- who polls predict will win a second term -- eclipsing
the moderate left and other run of the mill Communists.
Her agenda is simply radical: halt all economic reforms,
break off relations with
the IMF, raise wages and pensions, re-nuclearize Ukraine
and join a union with
Russia and Belarus within "five or ten years."
The moon-faced 47-year-old is not in the habit of mincing her
words, and no
one is safe from her scathing attacks. She accuses the
government of being
made up of "clans." The Communists, she says, are "puppets."
Her thoughts have earned her the hatred of Ukrainian
nationalists and the
mistrust of foreign investors, western leaders and
international financial institutions.
"Someone like her would drive Ukraine to the wall," a western
diplomat said under cover of anonymity.
But her message has touched a chord among a population
weary of painful
economic reforms and often nostalgic for the Communist
stability many remember from the Soviet days.
Her party has mushroomed in just three years, growing from
820 registered members in 1997 to more than 13,000 today.
"I know I threaten the political clans and the crooks who serve
them, but people
want to live honestly and in peace. That is what I am
struggling for," said this
born orator, wounded lightly in a grenade attack at a rally in
early October.
Eight years of post-Communist reforms have become
synonymous with
suffering and poverty for many Ukrainians, whose average
salaries stand at less
than 50 dollars a month.
"Ukraine is bankrupt. Our foreign debt has climbed to 12.8
billion dollars and the
reforms have thrown 13 million workers into the street," she
charges, accusing
the IMF of wanting to turn this nation of 50 million into a
"banana republic."
A strong feature of her appeal, apart from personal charisma,
is Vitrenko's
image of incorruptibility -- a reputation which counts a lot
in a country ravaged
by corruption and the mafia.
The mother-of-three and an economist by training who was
elected to
parliament in 1994, Vitrenko says she lives in a small
apartment in a suburb with
her youngest daughter.
Cultivating the image of an ordinary woman, she dresses
simply and drives a
second-hand Hyundai rather than the Mercedes and BMWs
favored by other
presidential hopefuls. ((c) 1999 Agence France Presse)
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