Yulia Tymoshenko visits Canada on invitation of Canadian Friends of Ukraine (12/28/03)

Yulia Tymoshenko visits Canada on invitation of Canadian Friends of Ukraine

by Oksana Zakydalsky

TORONTO -Yulia Tymoshenko, one of the leaders of the opposition forces in Ukraine, announced her support for the selection of Viktor Yushchenko as the opposition's single unity candidate and promised she would not run as a candidate in the forthcoming presidential election.

Ms. Tymoshenko was in Canada from November 28 to December 4 on the invitation of the Canadian Friends of Ukraine. She had three public appearances in Toronto and at each one she underlined the importance of a single candidate, but it was only at her last public appearance on December 3, when she spoke to the Ukrainian community, that she named Mr. Yushchenko as the possible candidate. Her announcements immediately produced widespread resonance in the media in Ukraine.

Ms. Tymoshenko was in Canada as part of a group of parliamentarians - the others being Borys Tarasyuk, Stepan Khmara and Serhii Holovatyi - invited by the Canadian Friends of Ukraine (CFU), by Prof. Jurij Darewych, who explained the aims of the visit: "Among the goals of the CFU are the strengthening of ties between Canada and Ukraine and this includes closer contacts between Ukrainian and Canadian parliamentarians. The current visit is the most recent of invitations that our organization has hosted for Ukrainian parliamentarians" (some previous visitors being Vyacheslav Chornovil, Leonid Kravchuk, Yevhen Marchuk and Oleksander Moroz).

He continued: "We felt that the persons invited are among the key players in the current Ukrainian political scene from the democratic/patriotic side, and could provide interesting and useful insight into the upcoming presidential election year in Ukraine (Mr. Yushchenko was here earlier). Ms. Tymoshenko, in particular, had not visited Canada previously. We wanted to give them the opportunity of meeting with Canadian political leaders, as well as with members and leaders of the Ukrainian community."

"In inviting them we also wanted to underscore our continuing support of the democratic opposition to the current oligarchical, non-democratic and incompetent regime currently in power in Ukraine," Prof. Darewych added.

Mr. Tarasyuk was Ukraine's foreign affairs minister from 1998 to 2000. In 2002 he was elected deputy to the Verkhovna Rada, where he chairs the Committee on European Integration. This year he was elected leader of Rukh, which belongs to the Our Ukraine election bloc.

Ms. Tymoshenko was first elected to Ukraine's Parliament in 1996. She served as vice prime minister in the government of Mr. Yushchenko and currently heads the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc.

National Deputies Stepan Khmara and Serhii Holovatyi accompanied Ms. Tymoshenko on the visit. Also invited was Oleksander Zinchenko, a member of the Social Democratic Party-United, who is well-known for his championing of the independent media against state control. He is a vice-chairman of the Parliament, but his recent falling out with the SDPU has put his position at risk and prevented him from coming to Canada on this trip.

The visitors' program included the Statesmen Dinner on Sunday, November 30, at which Eric Margolis, contributing foreign editor of the Toronto Sun newspapers and a syndicated foreign affairs columnist whose articles appear in some of the leading newspapers in the world, was honored for his contribution to the field of international journalism, in particular for his articles about Ukraine's Famine-Genocide and on the demise of the Soviet Union. At the dinner, Mr. Margolis was introduced by his longtime friend and chief correspondent of CBC News, Peter Mansbridge.

In keeping with the main aim of the visit - to foster closer ties between Ukrainian and Canadian parliamentarians - the head table included ministers from the Canadian government and the newly elected provincial government, as well as a long-time friend of the city's Ukrainians, David Miller, the new mayor of Toronto. Among the guests were Sen. Raynell Andreychuk, honorary patron of the CFU, consuls and consuls-general. The consul-general of Ukraine in Toronto, Ihor Lissovskyi, could not personally attend. There were about 550 persons at the dinner.

The main drawing card to the Ukrainian delegation's public appearances in Toronto was Ms. Tymoshenko, who after Mr. Yushchenko is probably the biggest political celebrity from Ukraine. And, she did not disappoint. Dynamic, well-briefed, quick on the uptake, politically astute, soft spoken but resolute, she made a profound impression. Using no notes in her speeches, she answered questions well and frequently elicited applause.

Her answers to difficult questions were well-thought-out. When asked why her bloc supported Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych's government program, she said it was to split the pro-regime camp. When queried about why she cooperates with the Communists, she said it was to ensure that their votes in the election (in an anticipated second round) did not migrate over to the pro-regime camp.

An issue to which Ms. Tymoshenko referred several times was that of "outside scrutineers" for the presidential election - that Ukrainians from abroad should seek accreditation from the OSCE as official observers to lessen the chances of fraud and malfeasance in the coming election.

Mr. Holovatyi disagreed with her on this point, actually saying that Ukrainians who are citizens of Western countries should "stay home" and ensure that Ukrainian citizens living or working in those countries are not prevented from voting at the various Ukrainian embassies and consulates through illegal demands for documentation or various other maneuvers, as happened in the 1999 elections.

He explained that a person from abroad acting as an observer in say, Donetsk or Dnipropetrovsk, would be so lost as to be useless. At the same time, Mr. Holovatyi said, their presence would just put a "stamp of approval" on the procedures. He referred to the recent elections in Georgia as an example of such developments.

In Toronto, the visiting parliamentarians met with Bill Graham, minister of foreign affairs. According to Lesia Shymko of the CFU, they discussed the engagement of Canada in overseeing Ukraine's presidential election. Ms. Tymoshenko informed the Minister about the lack of openness in the press in Ukraine, the fact that the Verkhovna Rada is the one institution where democratic debate is still possible and the various maneuvers the current president will use to hold on to power.

The group was also hosted by the speaker of the Ontario Legislature, Alvin Curling, at which time they engaged in discussions about provincial parliamentary delegation visits and trade missions to Ukraine.

The visitors (minus Borys Tarasyuk who left on Monday) spent two days in Ottawa, where they took part in a roundtable with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, again providing Canadians with information about the current political situation in Ukraine. They paid a visit to the Speaker of Parliament, Peter Milliken, and spoke at the University of Ottawa at a Chair of Ukrainian Studies presentation.

Back in Toronto, Ms. Tymoshenko and Mr. Khmara spoke at a meeting with the Ukrainian community and, paid their respect to the various Ukrainian organizations and businesses attending.

Throughout the one-week packed visit, Ms. Tymoshenko - who is slight of build and always wears extremely high-heeled shoes - displayed incredible concentration and physical stamina. On her last stop in Toronto, at the Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Center, just hours before she was due at the airport, she took her time examining the UPA exhibit, asking many questions, while her "handlers" paced about nervously.

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