ANALYSIS: Inside Ukraine Newsletter, Kyiv, Ukraine, Wed, April 14, 2004

There are widespread reports that the expectations came asunder in day-long extremely heated and frantic negotiations between top administration figures, including the president, and highly placed figures in the Rada over specific concessions that were to be traded for positive votes on the reform package. Those asking for commitment on certain issues saw this as possibly the last opportunity they might ever have to gain the advantages they wanted and were unwilling to compromise without gaining president assent to their desires.

Also, the successful insistence by Socialist faction head Oleksandr Moroz that the reforms must carry a further amendment delaying their implementation until after the presidential elections was thought to have played a significant role in the lower vote count for the reforms.

In addition to those negotiations in which Viktor Medvedchuk was involved, there are unconfirmed rumors that the president himself was involved directly or indirectly with negotiations with Viktor Yushchenko's 'Our Ukraine' faction on an agreement that could have tipped the presidential election toward Yushchenko, while at the same time meeting some of Kuchma's need for peaceful and unfettered retirement.

In fact, some Moscow news outlets have alleged since Thursday that there was a Kuchma-Yushchenko deal. However, neither side will confirm such a deal and the evidence suggests that such a deal was not concluded.

What is clear is that the Yushchenko forces have good grounds for their charges that the pro-presidential forces have concealed something like 10 billion hryvnia in the 2004 budget that could be available to support either a Kuchma campaign or the campaign of someone who would have Kuchma's political blessings.

So far the unknowns seem to far outweigh the known factors in the developing political equation in regard to the presidential race. However, some things appear certain.

First, there is a consensus that the constitutional reforms as contained in the package voted on Thursday are dead for this session of the Rada. No one expects the Social Democrat claims of an improperly operation of the electronic voting system or any other such stratagem to be successful. Some matters that require only a simple majority of 226 votes in favor will need to be dealt with in order to complete election preparations. However, the major rules and procedures concerning the presidential vote are expected to be unchanged.

Secondly, if there can be said to be a recognizable winner of Thursday's vote, it was probably Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych who now has the added incentive for running a strong campaign because he knows that the powers of the presidential office will not have been decimated by the reform amendments.

Finally, the depth's to which Ukraine's major national media have fallen has been aptly demonstrated by the confusion following the reform vote. All major outlets, particularly television, have been remarkably silent on the issue since they seem to have no clear instructions from a somewhat dispirited and confused presidential administration. Coming to conclusions and opinions without presidential guidance seems to be a skill that the complacent major media has lost, at least for the time being.

One newspaper, Kievskiy Telegraf, alleges that on Thursday after the reform vote, several of the members of the Donetsk-oriented Regions of Ukraine faction were heard ordering their assistants to make reservations at some of Kyiv's most luxurious restaurants for very lavish meals, apparently feeling that the failed reform amendment vote was very good news for the future of Donetsk and the putative Donetsk standard bearer.