Rivals suspect Kuchma of intention to rig election (09/26/99)

Rivals suspect Kuchma of intention to rig election

RFE/RL Poland, Belarus and Ukraine Report

PRAGUE - Yevhen Marchuk, Oleksander Moroz, Volodymyr Oliinyk and Oleksander Tkachenko - the four presidential hopefuls who declared on August 24 that they will cooperate with each other and field one of their group against the incumbent in the presidential elections on October 31 - have issued another joint statement. They warned that the central authorities, "taking advantage of the short-sightedness of local executive power bodies, have seized leading posts in territorial election commissions in order to be able to falsify the election results in an unimpeded manner."

They pointed out that President Leonid Kuchma's representatives will head 80 territorial election commissions out of Ukraine's 225. The four hopefuls' representatives were less lucky: Mr. Tkachenko's people will head 16 commissions, Mr. Moroz's 14, Mr. Oliinyk's 12, and Mr. Marchuk's 10.

The four argued that this situation was "created artificially" under "moral and psychological pressure from the media controlled by the incumbent president."

They also suggested that Mr. Kuchma's election staff harbors expectations that anticipated protests and legal suits prompted by such "undemocratic actions" in the election campaign will make it possible for President Kuchma to declare the elections invalid in the event he loses.

"We say our resolute 'no' to these plans by the current authorities. We will prevent the elections from being disrupted and the people from being deceived through falsifications of the election results," the four pledged in their joint statement.

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