Members of Party of the Regions led by prime minister Viktor Yanukovych erect a tent camp in central Kiev, Ukraine, Monday, Sept 24, 2007. Ukrainian parties prepared for the Sunday parliamentary election by setting up tent camps in the center of the capital to call for a free and fair vote.
Photo: AP
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Ukraine: Tents at the Ready
// Extraordinary elections to be held Sunday
The campaign period for Sunday’s extraordinary elections in Ukraine is coming to a close. A ban on pre-election campaigning will come into effect tomorrow at midnight and ballots will be cast on Sunday. Several political powers have already expressed doubt that the votes will be counted honestly and are preparing for confrontation with the authorities. The Party of Regions is preparing to fight falsifications with street protests and the Socialists have promised to take the authorities to court. The current pre-election situation is beginning to look a lot like the build up to the Orange Revolution of 2004.
They prayed
The last days of Ukraine’s election campaign period have seen a peak in the political activity. Party leaders are doing everything possible to stay in the minds of the electorate after a ban on agitation takes effect tomorrow at midnight. The most extravagant means were used by activists for the party KUCHMA (an acronym for constitutionality, Ukraine, honor, peace and antifascism). Yesterday on Kiev’s Glory Square they put up a memorial to the former president of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma. The figure, in the image of Hercules with a laurel crown, attracted dozens of followers of the country’s second president. The most loyal among them held signs reading: “Kuchma, your children are being naughty,” “Danilevich (a close, informal address to Kuchma), give them a time-out!” and “Neither orange nor the blue, Kuchma, Kuchma we want you!” Aleksander Zadorozhny, one of the leaders of the Kuchma party said “I’m certain that there isn’t a better prime minister for the country. If we make it into parliament I’ll convince my colleagues that Kuchma should be our prime minister.”
The Block of Yulia Timoshenko (BYuT) decided to appeal to the decency of her competitors. “I ask you, at least for the last day of the campaign period, September 28, to refrain from slinging mud and slandering one another,” Timoshenko said, “I’d like us to turn to God and ask Him for happiness and fortune for Ukraine, for all families, for our children, for our future. A prayer gathering is scheduled for today at Sofia Square, where the party’s activists have long had their camp. The block is planning to wait here until the results of Sunday’s election are announced.
Timoshenko’s main competitor, Viktor Yanukovich, leader of the Party of Regions, also made an appeal to religion, calling on his supporters to catch their breath and pray. “On this day, the celebration of the Exaltation of the Cross, I ask you, my dear supporters, to refrain from loud actions. On such a day we should go to church and pray, asking the Lord to help us direct our efforts toward the path of goodness.”
They mobilized
But while preaching Christian values Viktor Yanukovich is simultaneously preparing for a harsh post-election confrontation. The Party of Regions is convinced that the election results will be falsified and are preparing for street protests. The “Regioners” have for the past week occupied the Orange Revolutions holy of holies, Independence Square. They set up a stage and tent village where a few hundred people are now residing. Anna German, a close colleague of Yanukovich, said that they will leave the square only on one condition – “victory.”
Yanukovich himself has promised that if he suspects electoral manipulation that he will start mass acts of protest. Details of a secret “Regions” plan have been leaked to the Ukrainian press. Plans include organizing strike forces for large-scale acts in Kiev and another large city in Ukraine, although the name was kept secret.
Yanukovich has shown the wonders of mobilization in the pre-election campaign. In order to reach as many voters as possible, Yanukovich moves from rally to rally in a helicopter, allowing him to make five or six appearances a day. Timoshenko and Yury Lutsenko, leader of the pro-presidential “Our Ukraine – People’s Self Defense” (NUNS) block, who travel by land, are able to make only three such appearances.
It seems, however, that this doesn’t bother the orange forces. NUNS and BYuT, who call themselves the main democratic forces, have sworn to form a parliamentary coalition after the elections. The agreement was reached yesterday at a meeting between President Yushchenko and Mrs. Timoshenko. “We have one option. That is to form a democratic coalition. Period. There will be no other coalition,” promised President Yushchenko. Earlier he said that if the orange forces win in the elections that he’s not against Timoshenko as prime minister.
They were poisoned
The Socialist Party has also prepared for a post-election confrontation. Their leader, Aleksander Moroz, said that regardless of the outcome of the elections he intends to take the issue to the courts. “We will turn to the courts. It is necessary given the number of violations at the last elections and those that still exist today,” Moroz said.
Political analysts have taken that statement to mean that Moroz has come to terms with the fact that he will not make it into this parliament. “There’s no doubt, it seems, among the socialists that they will not reach the necessary three percent for representation in parliament,” according to Vladimir Fenko, chairman of the board of the Center for Political Research ‘Penta’, “I think that Moroz will provoke a new crisis in parliament.” That could very well be. The latest survey by the International Institute of Sociology on September 14 showed that four parties will make it into the parliament: “Regions” with 33.1%, BYuT with 22.7%, NUNS with 13% and the Communists with 3.3%. According to the survey the Socialist party will receive only 1.2% of the vote.
In their despair the socialists decided to play a trump that, to this point, only Viktor Yushchenko has used. Vasily Tsushko, number two on the Socialist Party’s list announced this week that he had been hospitalized in May not because of a heart attack, but because he was poisoned by his political competitors from the president’s circle. “As far as I can tell I was poisoned May 25 or 26, after which I averted an attempt by pro-presidential forces to take the General Prosecutor’s office,” the head of the Interior Ministry said. As proof he supplied the results of a lab in Germany, saying that Tsushko’s blood contains a fatal amount of teofillin (439.8 mkg/ml). Teofillin is toxic for humans beginning at a 20 mkg/ml dosage. He didn’t explain, however, how he managed to survive.
Vladimir Solovyov
All the Article in Russian as of Sep. 28, 2007
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