UKRAINE…

After a thoroughly dirty campaign that twisted every instrument of state power to partisan advantage, President Leonid Kuchma took 56 percent of the vote in a run-off against Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko. Kuchma, who took only 36 percent in the first round of balloting, picked up virtually all the votes that had gone to other right-wing candidates. The backing of former Prime Minister Yevhen Marchuk (8 percent) was especially important. Marchuk will now become secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, with a special mandate to combat organized crime and corruption…. Kuchma remains in charge of a divided government. The communists and their allies on the left dominate the unicameral parliament, which does not face elections until 2002. The parliament is not likely to be any friendlier to Kuchma in the years ahead than in years past. As in Russia, a coherent economic program, if it were devised, could not be enacted.