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Ex-President Leonid Kuchma stifled democracy for 11 years until fed-up Ukrainians staged the 2004 Orange Revolution to protest the rigging of an election in favor of Kuchma’s annointed succcessor, Victor Yanukovych. Ukraine may look different these days, but the era started by former president Leonid Kuchma is far from over.

Late autumn includes two important dates in modern Ukrainian history: the Orange Revolution took place in 2004, and 10 years ago – on Nov. 14, 1999 -Leonid Kuchma was re-elected Ukraine’s president for his second and last term.

It was curious to watch parliament deputy Dmytro Tabachnyk recently saying that, in the times of Kuchma, many private TV channels were created, both local and national. This was his way of saying during a live program on Inter TV that his former patron (Tabachnyk used to head his administration) was the guarantor of freedom of speech in the country.

This revelation made me remember an event that took place soon after Kuchma was first elected president. On the day of March 10, 1995, when influential oppositional newspaper Silski Visti celebrated its 75th anniversary, it came out in print with front-page birthday greetings from then parliament Speaker Oleksandr Moroz, Prime Minister Vitaly Masol and a blank space with an editorial comment in the cutline.

If this is what the media policy was like among Kuchma’s close circle, it’s logical to presume that it was made within the framework of the president’s own views.

So, future developments in the media sector should not have come as a surprise, like the famous incident when the then-opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko was not allowed to speak at a live program at the First National Channel. It’s also natural that eventually the system eventually developed temnyky, or instructions how to cover certain events, that the president’s administration sent out to the most influential – and privately owned -- TV channels. This policy eventually led to the journalists’ rebellion.

Tabachnyk’s recent remarks came within the framework of the discussion to mark 10 years since Kuchma’s re-election. At first sight it really does seem like we live in a post-Kuchma era, since the current lot of leaders came to power on the wave of the crushing criticism of his regime. It’s even possible that Victor Yushchenko and Tymoshenko truly did want to change the system at one point in their careers. One illustration of these honest intention was the re-privatization of the metallurgical giant Kryvorizhstal, which, under Kuchma, had been sold for cheap to his own son-in-law Victor Pinchuk and powerful Donetsk businessman Rinat Akhmetov.

A great live TV auction was later organized by Tymoshenko where an honest and open sale of Kryvorizhstal occurred that had been confiscated from the oligarchs. It was sold at five times the price Kuchma’s close circle had paid for it.

In his book “Pislya Maidanu” (After Maidan, referring to the Orange Revolution), that came out in 2007, Kuchma attempted to defend what others called his “criminal privatization.” He says at the time those in power had no way to make it any different, that Ukrainian society had no tradition of auctions, and multiple enterprises were privatized by those who were more agile.

In reality, privatization was often dishonest, and even when nominal auctions did take place, the winner had been determined in advance: whoever was closer to power or paid a bigger bribe. This was the true essence of “the Kuchma regime.”

This year we saw an attempt to privatize the giant Odesa Portside chemical plant. The whole procedure was funny and non-transparent, and then everything was canceled. This is just one illustration that the Kuchma regime lives on and flourishes. Kryvorizhstal re-privatization turned out to be not just the first, but the only step that the current power holders have made to fight corruption.

They have done just as little in other sectors. Once, thanks to the tapes of former Kuchma’s guard, Major Mykola Melnychenko, we learned about an eloquent phrase that Kuchma had allegedly said in a confidential conversation with one of his men. He suggested that one of the “disobedient” judges should be “hung up by the balls.” But the greatest proof of how twisted the whole judicial system in Ukraine was a resolution by the Constitutional Court in December 2003 that ruled that Kuchma’s two terms were effectively just one term under the new Ukrainian constitution. This disgraceful assault on common sense was explained by the observers as Kuchma’s desire to stay on for the third term.

But it would be naive to think that anything has improved. Ukrainian judges can indeed at any moment be grabbed by the very organ mentioned by the former president. Courts remain in the pockets of political power brokers, and serve their interests.

So, the arrival of new people on the wave of the Orange Revolution in 2005, despite some of their efforts, has changed very little of the essence from the Kuchma era. The only difference is that, in his time, the main arbiter in the relationships among the most powerful oligarchic clans was the president and his team. But now every clan has their own representatives in the highest echelons of power, and the bitter fights that used to happen behind closed doors are now in the open and look like huge scandals.

However, the Orange Revolution that propelled Yushchenko and Tymoshenko to power changed a lot in the heads of regular people. And this gives us hope that the attempts to bring down the foundation of society created by Kuchma. There is hope that one day we’ll be able to say that we truly live in a post-Kuchma era.

Yuriy Lukanov is a freelance journalist and writer living in Kyiv. He is the author of the book “The third president. A political portrait of Leonid Kuchma.” The book came out in 1996. He can be reached at lukanov@ukr.net.