ELECTION WATCH (09/26/04)

ELECTION WATCH

Yushchenko resumes campaigning

KYIV - Some 70,000 gathered in Kyiv on September 18 for a campaign rally by presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko, leader of the opposition Our Ukraine bloc, UNIAN reported. Mr. Yushchenko resumed his presidential campaign after a two-week interruption caused by a bout of acute poisoning, which was blamed by some opposition activists on an alleged attempt on Mr. Yushchenko's life. Mr. Yushchenko, who came for the rally almost directly from a clinic in Vienna, told the crowd that the past two weeks were the "most tragic" period in his life. He said the current authorities are "in their death throes" and assured rally participants that he will win this fall's presidential elections. He also pledged to immediately pull the Ukrainian military contingent out of Iraq after his anticipated victory. The Yushchenko campaign staff submitted 1.7 million signatures in support of his candidacy to the Central Election Commission on September 19. Each presidential candidate was to supply at least 500,000 signatures in support of his or her candidacy by September 20 in order to be allowed on the ballot. (RFE/RL Newsline)

Was Yushchenko deliberately poisoned?

KYIV - Oleksander Zinchenko, presidential campaign manager of leading opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko, told journalists in Kyiv on September 17 that Mr. Yushchenko's recent bout of acute poisoning may have resulted from an intentional attempt on his life, Interfax reported. Mr. Zinchenko cited doctors from a clinic in Vienna, who examined Mr. Yushchenko, as saying that the candidate's ailment was caused by "a viral infection and chemical substances that usually do not appear in foodstuffs." Since the examination in Vienna was made six days after the poisoning, Mr. Zinchenko added, it proved impossible for the doctors to identify what "chemical substances" might have been involved. (RFE/RL Newsline)

Copies of opposition paper destroyed

KYIV - A group of men in Ukrainian police uniforms destroyed thousands of copies of an opposition weekly, reported the Associated Press, citing a news agency story of September 15. The uniformed men raided the offices of a printing company in Dnipropetrovsk, where they destroyed 17,000 copies of the weekly Lits (Face), Elena Garaguts, the editor in-chief, told the UNIAN news service. Ms. Garaguts said the attack could have been connected with the magazine's critical writing about Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, a major candidate in the October 31 presidential election. "This was half of our circulation ... luckily the other half was distributed," Ms. Garaguts noted. (Associated Press)

Kinakh: oblast leaders should be elected

POLTAVA - The leader of the Party of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, presidential candidate Anatolii Kinakh, said that he believes the chairmen of district and oblast state administrations should be elected, and not appointed by presidential decree. He made the statement at a meeting with workers of the Poltava-based Znamia plant during a two-day visit to the region. "It is absolutely necessary to resume electing not only at the level of the districts, but also the oblasts," said Mr. Kinakh. He noted that he had participated in the election for chairman of the Mykolaiv Oblast and won in 1994, when this was an elected post, garnering nearly 70 percent of the votes in the region. "Then we traveled to Kyiv, feeling the legal protection and support of the people ... but, while leaving for Mykolaiv, I knew that there will not be a decree of the president on my dismissal," said Mr. Kinakh. (Ukrainian News Agency, ARTUIS)

Yanukovych pledges to raise wages

KYIV - The leader of the Party of Regions, presidential candidate Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, has promised to double or triple wages in the coming three to four years. Mr. Yanukovych made his comment in the course of a visit to the Poltava region during a meeting with the scientific and creative intelligentsia of the region. "We will set the task of increasing the budget to 120 billion hrv for two-three years. We will do this and we will increase wages by two- to three-fold. We see how this will be done," he said. Mr. Yanukovych also pledged to increase the amounts for compensation on depreciated deposits annually. "In this year we put in 500 million hrv for these purposes, next year we will put in 1 billion hrv, that is more than double, and for 2006 more than double it and just like that each year. Moreover, we will first and foremost return the savings to elderly citizens who have no possibility to wait," he said. He noted that the minimum wage will be increased as of September 1 of this year from 205 hrv to 237 hrv, whereas the wage of employees in the budgetary sphere, most especially doctors, teachers and cultural workers, will go up by 15.6 percent. According to data of the State Statistics Committee, the average monthly wage in Ukraine rose in June by 8.4 percent to 601.45 hrv. (Ukrainian News, ARTUIS)

Chornovil joins Yanukovych team

KYIV - Former opposition National Deputy Taras Chornovil has become an adviser to presidential candidate and Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. The Ukrainska Pravda website wrote that the anti-presidential radical's change of heart is hard to understand as his declared desire for self-fulfillment. It is more likely that he is acting out of pique at not being begged to return to the faction of front-running opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko. Ivan Haivanovych, in an article titled "Where is Taras Chornovil going?" published on the website on September 9, wrote: "In a telephone conversation with Ukrainska Pravda, Taras Chornovil repeated many times that nothing meriting press attention had happened, that it was not news, and so on. Dare we assume that only a bare minority of people interested politics will agree with Mr. Chornovil? On the contrary, the news that opposition figure Taras Chornovil has agreed to become an adviser to the prime minister [Viktor Yanukovych] has every chance of becoming the top news of the day. All the more so in that the deputy does not rule out in future the possibility of formalizing the cooperation, in which case he will become a freelance adviser to the prime minister. To be sure, the politician immediately added that for him this 'plays a small role.' Chornovil said that he gave his agreement to the cooperation proposal, which came from the prime minister's side, after discussing its possible forms 'with people from the Cabinet of Ministers and the prime minister's office.' He said that his present collaboration with the government was in no way linked with the election campaign and that his role in the present presidential election was 'absolutely zero.' " (BBC Monitoring, ARTUIS)

PACE calls for amending election law

STRASBOURG - The Monitoring Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) said in a press release on September 15 that the ongoing presidential campaign in Ukraine fails to meet democratic election standards and is a "cause of great concern" for PACE. This assessment was based on a recent fact-finding mission by PACE rapporteurs Hanne Severinsen and Renate Wohlwend in Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk. The PACE Monitoring Committee called on Ukrainian authorities to urgently amend the presidential election law in order to grant domestic nonpartisan organizations whose statutory aim is election observation the right to observe the elections with status equal to that of international observers. The committee appealed to Kyiv to stop the practice of employing civil servants in the campaign and using public resources for the purpose of campaigning. The committee also said it is concerned by the small number of international observers to be sent by various international organizations and foreign states for the October 31 elections in Ukraine - some 800 for the country's 33,000 polling stations. (RFE/RL Newsline)

Signatures collected for PM in Russia

KYIV - Yurii Klochkovskyi, a representative of opposition presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko in the Central Election Commission, has demanded a probe into who collected signatures in Russia in support of the presidential bid of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, the Ukrainska Pravda website reported on September 14. Ukrainian media reported that more than 560,000 Ukrainian citizens living in Russia signed Mr. Yanukovych's candidate signature lists. "If the instructions [to collect signatures for Yanukovych] were passed via the Embassy and consulates of the Ukrainian state [in Russia], it was a violation of Ukrainian legislation and those signatures are not valid," Mr. Klochkovskyi said. "If this was done with the help of Russian power bodies and Russian citizens, who are forbidden to take part in the elections of the Ukrainian president, this [would provoke] even more questions." (RFE/RL Newsline)

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