NEW YORK: Leonid Kuchma may have trounced his nearest contender -- the Communist Petro Simonenko -- but his recent election to a second five-year term as Ukraine's president is no victory for democracy. Nor is it a victory for Ukraine. Indeed, Kuchma seems to have torn a page from Boris Yeltsin's 1996 campaign manual, employing strong-arm tactics to intimidate and silence the opposition, as well as a tainted privatization process to buy support from Ukraine's powerful and corrupt oligarchs.
NEW YORK: Leonid Kuchma may have trounced his nearest contender -- the Communist Petro Simonenko -- but his recent election to a second five-year term as Ukraine's president is no victory for democracy. Nor is it a victory for Ukraine. Indeed, Kuchma seems to have torn a page from Boris Yeltsin's 1996 campaign manual, employing strong-arm tactics to intimidate and silence the opposition, as well as a tainted privatization process to buy support from Ukraine's powerful and corrupt oligarchs.