ELECTION WATCH (08/15/04)

ELECTION WATCH

Yushchenko is being shadowed

KYIV - Presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko, who leads the opposition Our Ukraine bloc, and his bodyguards detained three men who were shadowing him in Crimea on August 10, the Ukrainska Pravda website reported. The men had a directional microphone, radios, video cameras and a car with 12 extra license plates. They also had a videocassette documenting one day of Mr. Yushchenko's stay with his family in Sevastopol. According to Mr. Yushchenko's spokeswoman Iryna Heraschenko, the detained men could not explain what they were doing in Crimea. Mr. Yushchenko reported the incident to the police. "Such people in uniforms discredit not only their service but also the law and the country as a whole," the Our Ukraine leader commented on the detainees.

Rival claims "Georgian scenario"

KYIV - Serhii Tyhypko, head of the presidential campaign staff of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, said on ICTV on August 10 that Mr. Yushchenko and his followers are going to hold the upcoming presidential elections under a "Georgian scenario," the Ukrainska Pravda website reported. "Now they are trying to zombify [voters] - if Yushchenko loses, it will mean that the elections were rigged," Mr. Tyhypko said. "Then the next steps will follow - a Georgian variant, a revolution. ... I want to ask [our] opponents: Do we need a revolution or elections?" (RFE/RL Newsline)

26 candidates are running

KYIV - The Central Election Commission (CEC) on August 5 registered Mykola Rohozhynskyi and Mykola Hrabar as presidential candidates for the October 31 ballot, bringing the total number of registered hopefuls to 26, Ukrainian media reported. "This is the final figure," the CEC's Serhii Kyvalov told journalists. "We did not expect that there would be 26 candidates, but this is no obstacle to us." Mr. Kyvalov said a preliminary estimate of state election expenditures was based on 20 candidates competing, and must be revised. Meanwhile, President Leonid Kuchma said in an interview with Fakty i Kommentarii on August 6: "[The registration of such a number of candidates] is by no means a case when we can say, 'the more the better.' " (RFE/RL Newsline)

Candidates to receive airtime

KYIV - The Central Election Commission on August 10 adopted, on the basis of a draw, a schedule for using television and radio airtime as well as print space in the newspapers Holos Ukrainy and Uriadovyi Kurier by 26 presidential candidates for budget-funded election advertisements, Interfax reported. In particular, each presidential contender has the right to address viewers on the national UT-1 television channel three times for 10 minutes each. In addition, each contender can use 45 minutes of airtime on a nationwide radio channel as well as 30 minutes on a regional television channel and 20 minutes on a regional radio channel in each of Ukraine's 27 regions. (RFE/RL Newsline)

Yushchenko wants troop pullout

KYIV - Presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko, the leader of the opposition Our Ukraine bloc, has vowed to withdraw the Ukrainian military contingent from Iraq if he wins the country's presidential election, UNIAN reported on August 10. "The regime of [Prime Minister Viktor] Yanukovych and [President Leonid] Kuchma [considers the presence of the Ukrainian troops in Iraq] an excuse for anti-democratic actions in Ukraine," Mr. Yushchenko told a group of voters in Crimea. "We don't want to restore democracy in Iraq through a suppression of democracy in Ukraine. ... The current rotation of the contingent should be the last." (RFE/RL Newsline)

Communist leader courts Moroz

KYIV - Presidential candidate Petro Symonenko, the leader of the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU), has said that, if he wins this fall's presidential election, he is ready to offer the post of prime minister to another leftist presidential candidate, Socialist Party Chairman Oleksander Moroz, Interfax reported on August 10. Touching on the possibility of unifying the political left in Ukraine, Mr. Symonenko said, "The epochal unification of the leftists as a powerful political alternative to the dictatorship of criminal oligarchy is possible only on the basis of the CPU." Mr. Moroz ran in the 1994 and 1999 presidential elections, in which he won 13.3 percent and 11.3 percent of the vote, respectively. Mr. Symonenko ran in the 1999 election, obtaining 36.5 percent of the vote in the first round and 37.8 percent in the runoff. (RFE/RL Newsline)

Moroz urges statement on Gongadze

KYIV - Socialist Party leader and presidential candidate Oleksander Moroz has called on the country's leaders to "immediately issue an official statement on the deliberate violation of the law on investigative activity" in connection with "the admission by the Procurator General's Office that police officers were illegally shadowing journalist Heorhii Gongadze," Interfax reported on August 4. Mr. Moroz referred to leaked documents posted at www.delogongadze.org, which include records of the questioning of police officers who said they had been shadowing Gongadze before his disappearance in September 2000. Earlier that week, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Procurator General's Office admitted that the documents published at www.delogongadze.org are authentic. "All the new information about the circumstances of the crime and the complete inactivity of the authorities will be officially submitted to all the leading international organizations that follow developments in the Gongadze investigation," Mr. Moroz said in a letter to the president, procurator general and internal affairs minister. (RFE/RL Newsline)

Yushchenko program promoted in Moscow

KYIV - Oleksander Zinchenko, presidential campaign manager of Our Ukraine leader Viktor Yushchenko, was in Moscow on August 4 to challenge the Russian perception of Mr. Yushchenko as a radical nationalist, Ukraine's private ICTV television reported. Mr. Zinchenko met with Russia's Federation Council Chairman Sergei Mironov and members of the Russian Duma's Committee on Relations with Ukraine and held a news conference at the Sobesiednik weekly's editorial office. Mr. Zinchenko's news conference at Interfax in Moscow was canceled by the agency on short notice - a move blamed by Mr. Yushchenko on behind-the-scenes pressure by the Ukrainian presidential administration. "With Yushchenko as president, Ukraine will be a consistent partner, a pragmatic partner, a predictable partner," Mr. Zinchenko said in Moscow. "I guarantee that everything will be all right in this respect. You will not get more stable relations under any other regime." The general perception of both Russian and Ukrainian observers is that the Kremlin unofficially favors Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych for president. (RFE/RL Newsline)

Yushchenko supports freedom of speech

IVANO-FRANKIVSK - Speaking at a press conference here on July 16, Viktor Yushchenko said he is convinced that democracy is impossible without providing complete information to the people. "Your freedom of speech, mass media, means freedom of choice for the people," Mr. Yushchenko told journalists. "A politician who cannot guarantee the freedom of speech will not bring progress to the nation." The presidential candidate stated that Our Ukraine has consistently supported freedom of speech. In the parliament Our Ukraine fights for journalists' rights. Mr. Yushchenko noted that it was his faction that had initiated hearings on the freedom of speech and renewed tax benefits for media. "We see freedom of speech as the primary task for the new government; journalists must be free, and the press must not be persecuted," emphasized Mr. Yushchenko. (www.razom.org.ua)

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