Elections in Ukraine used to be won and lost the old- fashioned way: with polling site intimidation, stuffed ballot boxes, doctored voter rolls, and video tapes of candidates and scantily-clad women.
These days, as Ukraine heads into its fourth general election in three years, campaign tools of choice have taken on a Westward slant: advertising exposure, grassroots support, and cash and yet more cash in the party till considered the keys to election success. All three major Ukrainian political parties approach the September 30 vote, for the first time, with American political advisors in- house.
Ukraine's Orange Revolution in 2004 ended the undisputed reign of Moscow-based campaign managers in Ukraine as, when the ruling party attempted to fix an election using good old Soviet techniques, the Russia-inspired ploy backfired and millions of irate voters took to the streets.
Now, even the party that attempted to defraud that democratic process, the Regions Ukraine party, employs a hired gun straight from Washington, DC: US political strategist Paul Manafort. According to Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper he is on a retainer worth for "several million dollars."
Of course, Manafort had his work cut out for him. The face of Regions Ukraine, a political party closely linked to the coal and steel barons in Ukraine's Russian-speaking industrial East, is none other than Viktor Yanukovich.
Besides being prime minister he is also a tough and physically massive ex-convict given to using vulgar language in public, and so an unappealing candidate to millions of middle- and lower-class Ukrainians.
Manafort, perhaps drawing on his past experience advising the regimes of Ferdinand Marcos and Agusto Pinochet, and certainly assisted by Ukrainian spin doctors hired by Regions, have deftly repackaged Yanukovich, engineering one of the most breathtaking makeovers yet seen in Ukrainian politics.
Gone are the turtlenecks, black suits, and fierce frowns that was the Yanukovich image of past campaigns. Regions' television spots feature a user-friendly Yanukovich, in shirt sleeves or tailored suits, making speeches frequently erudite and always empty of swear words, proudly standing on Regions' record of sustained economic growth, and promising to keep "Orange Chaos" out of Ukrainian politics.
Yanukovich's arch-rival Yulia Tymoshenko, likewise, has been employing conventional election tactics in this campaign, assisted by US advisors or Ukrainians using standard western campaign techniques.
Ukrainian media have identified Joe Lockhart, US President Bill Clinton's former Press Secretary, and Whites Communications, an English press agency, as among her advisors. Timoshenko's message, as leader of a party by the same name, is simple, powerful, and familiar throughout the democratic world: "The incumbent government is a pack of corrupt rascals, throw them out."
This campaign, she has continued her long-time practice of appearing in public exquisitely made up, but her beloved Louis Vuitton suits are less evident, and most often she is in white from head to toe, making clear to voters she isn't corrupt.
But the Tymoshenko of past campaigns, leading demonstrations and calling for marcher assaults on government buildings, is left to history. Now, she reserves her fiery rhetoric for - in yet another innovation for Ukrainian politics - speeches delivered in city after city to thousands of onlookers, in a gruelling whistle-stop campaign aimed at reaching voters where they live.Her television commercials are updated as well.
Instead of viciously assaulting the integrity and even masculinity of men like Yanukovich, these days Tymoshenko soberly discusses turning Ukraine into a high-tech, low-cost manufacturer like Malaysia.
Stanton Anderson, a US lawyer involved in the 1980 Reagan-Bush presidential campaign, is according to a Unian news report working for Ukraine's number three party, Our Ukraine National Self Defence (OUNSD).
OUNSD, a direct descendent of partisan organisations that fought the Soviets, in past elections tried to obtain votes on patriotism, positioning itself as the party with a first priority of defeating Russian imperialism, and promoting Ukrainian independence.
But not nearly so much this campaign. True, the OUNSD's titular head, President Viktor Yushchenko, still talks of the "Ukrainian idea" and "European values." But frankly, OUNSD campaigners spend most their speeches and advertising budgets arguing that individual Ukrainians will be better off, with more money in their pocket and better social services, if they vote OUNSD, and not Timoshenko and Yanukovich. The Russian threat, this election in Ukraine, is not an issue.
-dpa
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