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[Deychak, Orest]

RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
___________________________________________________________

RFE/RL NEWSLINE Vol. 11, No. 147, Part II, 10 August 200

END NOTE

NEW ELECTIONS FOR OLD CONTENDERS IN UKRAINE

By Jan Maksymiuk

On August 2, Ukraine officially entered its campaign for early parliamentary
elections to be held on September 30. The major political parties have
already held conventions to approve their manifestos and candidates for the
polls. 

However, those hoping for a new political opening in Ukraine in the fall may
be deeply disappointed. There are hardly any new ideas in election programs
and hardly any new names on election lists compared with those during the
2006 elections. And public-opinion surveys in Ukraine suggest that the
alignment of forces in a future legislature may be very similar to that in
the current one.

The main contenders in this year's preterm elections are the same as those
in the regular parliamentary elections in March 2006: the Party of Regions,
the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, the Our Ukraine-People's Self-Defense bloc, the
Socialist Party, and the Communist Party. The only difference is that the
Our Ukraine-People's Self-Defense bloc was just Our Ukraine last year,
without the People's Self-Defense component later created by former Interior
Minister Yuriy Lutsenko.

The Party of Regions led by Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych -- which held
its showy, Western-style election convention in Kyiv on August 4 -- declared
that it will focus on economic and social issues in the ongoing campaign,
thus hushing up its former concerns about giving the Russian language
official status and fostering the electorate's anti-NATO sentiments in
Ukraine.

Yanukovych has apparently decided to capitalize on a fairly strong economic
performance of his two cabinets, the current one and that in 2002-04.
Warding off President Viktor Yushchenko's recent criticism of the economic
situation, Yanukovych's press service reminded Ukrainians that the economy
grew by 9.6 percent in 2003 and by 12 percent in 2004, adding that in 2005,
when the Orange Revolution government took over, economic growth fell to 2.7
percent. Since August 2006, when Yanukovych became prime minister for the
second time, average economic growth has stood at 8 percent, the press
service stressed.

Moreover, Yanukovych has outstripped Yushchenko in pledges to overcome
Ukraine's protracted demographic crisis, in which the number of Ukrainians
shrank from 52 million in 1992 to 46.5 million in 2007. In June, Yushchenko
promised to increase a state allowance for the second and every subsequent
child born to families from the current 8,000 hryvnyas ($1,600) to 15,000
hryvnyas. Yanukovych promised at the August 4 convention that if he wins the
elections, his government will increase this payment to 25,000 hryvnyas for
the second child and to 50,000 hryvnyas for every additional child.

Yanukovych surprised his adherents and opponents with two more election
devices. He used a teleprompter to read his speech at the election
convention, a hitherto unheard-of practice in Ukrainian politics. And he
referred to God in his concluding words, which was also a first for him: "We
are heading straight for the victory with firm steps! The Lord God help us!"

The top 10 candidates of the Party of Regions are exclusively former
lawmakers. The Party of Regions election ticket includes five current deputy
prime ministers and 11 ministers.

A convention of the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc on August 5, even if less pompous
and less technologically advanced than that of the Party of Regions, was
also eye-catching. The bloc's leader, former Prime Minister Yulia
Tymoshenko, had all delegates to the convention put on white T-shirts with a
red heart and the inscription "Yulya" on them. In general, the initial
letter of her first name -- the Cyrillic "Yu" -- has seemingly become a new
graphic symbol of the bloc, since it was utilized in many slogans and
inscriptions visible at the convention, including the phrase "I love Yu."
Tymoshenko, who in the past frequently appeared in trendy and costly outfits
from Europe's top fashion designers, this time donned a Ukrainian folk-style
dress.

The convention adopted an election manifesto called "Ukrainian
Breakthrough," which has so far not been revealed to the public, including
the bloc's ordinary members and supporters. But Tymoshenko provided a
glimpse into the program at the convention when she proposed that corrupt
officials be punished with imprisonment for life and that judges be elected
by popular vote.

The top 10 candidates of the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc are exclusively former
legislators.

The Our Ukraine-People's Self-Defense bloc held its election convention on
August 7. The forum was attended by President Yushchenko, who blessed what
he described as the unification of Ukrainian democratic forces into a single
bloc for the early polls. And he seemed to indicate a spiritual direction
for the bloc when he stated that, "Our ideal is a powerful state, a single
people, a single official language, a single Christian Orthodox Church, and
a single nation."

The pro-presidential bloc adopted an election manifest titled "For People,
Not For Politicians," which calls for abolishing parliamentary immunity,
canceling privileges for lawmakers, setting up a national anticorruption
bureau, and forming an independent body to vet all judges.

Yuriy Lutsenko, one of the leaders of the bloc, claimed in a passionate
speech at the August 7 convention that the Our Ukraine-People's Self-Defense
election list does not include people who "went whoring" in the past or
betrayed the 2004 Orange Revolution. He specifically mentioned Party of
Industrialists and Entrepreneurs leader Anatoliy Kinakh and Socialist Party
leader Oleksandr Moroz in this regard, branding them "Judases" for their
alliance with the Party of Regions.

The top 10 candidates of the bloc include only one new name, that of
television journalist Volodymyr Aryev. The remaining nine are either former
lawmakers or people already known in politics, such as Foreign Minister
Arseniy Yatsenyuk and Defense Minister Anatoliy Hrytsenko.

The least conspicuous of recent election gatherings in Ukraine was that of
the Socialist Party on August 4. According to all opinion surveys, the
Socialist Party will be fighting for survival in this election. Its
popularity rating is currently well below the 3 percent threshold that
qualifies for parliamentary representation.

Moroz on August 4 condemned the upcoming elections as an "adventurous" and
"illegitimate" event, claiming that their main objectives are to remove the
Socialists from parliament, "draw" Ukraine into NATO, and "cause a quarrel"
between Ukraine and Russia.

Public-opinion polls conducted in Ukraine in June and July suggest that the
elections will be won by the Party of Regions with 30-33 percent of the
vote, while second place will be contested by the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc
(14-17 percent) and Our Ukraine-People's Self-Defense (13-15 percent). The
Communist Party should gain 3-5 percent of the vote.

The Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc has definitely ruled out any postelection
coalition with the Party of Regions. Yanukovych at the August 4 convention
expressed his preference for a "grand" coalition, but mentioned no specific
forces. Lutsenko on August 7 admitted that it is possible for his bloc to
cooperate with Yanukovych's people in parliament but excluded any governing
alliance with them. In short, the starting political preferences of
Ukraine's key political players before the September 2007 elections are
almost the same as those before the March 2006 polls.

Eurasia Daily Monitor

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

YUSHCHENKO, YANUKOVYCH, TYMOSHENKO CONTESTING ELECTION AGAIN
   
The campaign for the September 30 parliamentary elections officially kicked
off in Ukraine on August 2. This campaign will see the same contenders as in
the March 2006 election: President Viktor Yushchenko's Our Ukraine-People's
Self-Defense bloc (NUNS), except last year it was just Our Ukraine, without
Yuriy Lutsenko's Self-Defense; the Party of Regions (PRU) of Prime Minister
Viktor Yanukovych, which represents Eastern Ukraine's big businesses; and
the populists from the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc (BYuT).
   
The Communists and the Socialists, which barely made it into parliament in
2006, again will be fighting for their survival. The Communists have better
chances than the Socialists, who apparently lost much of their electorate
because of their largely unexpected coalition with the PRU. Both are set to
enter a coalition with the PRU again, once in parliament.
   
So far, the campaign is focused on domestic problems, such as corruption,
the cancellation of the deputy immunity from prosecution (a top issue with
both NUNS and BYuT), amending the constitution, the demographic problem (all
three main players promise more money for one-time payments for childbirth)
and, to a lesser extent, the official language issue. Foreign political
issues are not high on the agenda, and none of the main players have
positioned themselves as pro-Russian or decidedly pro-Western. NUNS is
pro-NATO; the PRU reluctantly concedes that NATO membership may be on the
agenda in the future; and this issue is not among BYuT's top priorities.
   
Rumors persist about PRU infighting. Several newspapers have speculated that
Yanukovych may be replaced as prime minister by either Ukraine's richest
man, Renat Akhmetov, who is viewed as the PRU's main financier, or
Akhmetov's right-hand man, Borys Kolesnikov. Both have denied this. Akhmetov
said he is not planning to work in the executive at all, and Kolesnikov
repeated in several interviews that there is no need to replace Yanukovych
as head of the cabinet.
   
The PRU, confident of its strength, has been the only force among the three
main players to not form a bloc. Instead, several small parties ceased to
exist to enable their leaders to join the PRU's list for the election. The
list, adopted at the party's pre-election convention on August 4, includes a
record number of government officials: five deputy prime ministers and 11
cabinet ministers. The head of Yushchenko's office, Viktor Baloha, has
suggested that the PRU will not resist the temptation of using
"administrative resources," meaning the government's illegal participation
in the campaign in favor of one party, a frequent charge against former
president Leonid Kuchma.
   
NUNS has ostentatiously crossed Yushchenko's aides, including Baloha, from
its list, in order to preclude accusations against Yushchenko of
interference in the election process. Furthermore, Yushchenko in August 6
dismissed six advisers who had decided to run for parliament on the NUNS
list. There are, however, two key ministers among the top 10 on the NUNS
list: Foreign Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk and Defense Minister Anatoly
Hrytsenko. The PRU has already accused Hrytsenko of having recourse to
administrative resource, claiming that military servicemen were spotted
distributing NUNS campaign materials.
   
One of the main questions that the election should resolve is whether the
current opposition will remain united. Tymoshenko and Our Ukraine (NU)
leader Vyacheslav Kyrylenko have pledged that their parties would be
together, and never form a coalition with the PRU. Lutsenko, who tops the
NUNS list, however, has not ruled out his party's cooperation with the PRU
in a new parliament on specific issues like constitutional amendments or new
electoral legislation. "We have to take into account that about one in three
Ukrainians backs the PRU," he told Inter TV, urging "dialogue" with the PRU.
Yanukovych, addressing the PRU convention on August 4, urged a broad
coalition, but he did not mention either NUNS or BYuT specifically.
   
Tymoshenko, addressing her convention on August 5, said that corrupt
officials should be imprisoned for life, and that judges should be elected
by popular vote. BYuT also seeks a new constitution in order to strengthen
the presidency. Tymoshenko also promised to do her utmost to revise gas
agreements with Russia. She wants to remove intermediaries in the natural
gas trade, and she also pledged to return to cheaper gas prices for Ukraine.
   
Recent opinion polls show that not much should change in parliament after
the election, so Yushchenko and Tymoshenko's hopes for a parliament
dominated by their coalition will hardly come true. The PRU is the confident
leader of popular sympathies. Some 30-33% of Ukrainians are ready to vote
for it, according to the polls conducted independently by SOCIS and the
Public Opinion Foundation in June and July. NUNS and BYuT will contest the
second position. They should score respectively 13-15% and 14-17.5%,
according to the pollsters. The Communists should score 3.5-5%. The
Socialists may fail to clear the 3% barrier, as public support for them
hovers around 1.1-2.5%.
   
(Glavred.info, July 30; UNIAN, July 28, August 1, 4; Segodnya, August 2;
Interfax-Ukraine, Channel 5, August 4; Inter, August 5; Ukrayinska pravda,
August 6)
   


--Pavel Korduban
 
 
 <javascript:void(0)> 


WORLD BRIEFING EUROPE
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 
9 August 2007
Late Edition - Final
4
English
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved. 

Leonid Stadnik, a 37-year-old former veterinarian who lives in northern
Podolyantsy, is the tallest person in the world, at 8 feet 5 inches, a
Guinness World Records spokeswoman said in London. That is eight inches
taller than the former titleholder, Bao Xishun of China. 

AP
Ukraine Chernobyl; $507 million pledged toward building new Chernobyl
protective shelter 
6 August 2007
English
 

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) - The European Bank of Reconstruction and Development has
pledged $507 million to help Ukraine build a new shelter for the Chernobyl
reactor, the site of the world's worst nuclear accident, officials said
Monday. 

Chernobyl's reactor No. 4 exploded and burned on April 26, 1986, spewing
radiation over a large swath of the former Soviet Union and much of northern
Europe. An area roughly half the size of Italy was contaminated, forcing the
resettlement of hundreds of thousands of people and ruining some of Europe's
most fertile farmland. 

A protective "sarcophagus" that was hastily erected over the reactor is now
crumbling, and a $1.2 billion project to replace it remains on the drawing
board. Ukraine has repeatedly asked for money from the European Union and
other Western sources to fund a new shelter. 

More than $600 million has already been pledged by 28 donor governments. 

Lyudmila Shcherban, an Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman, said the
money will go toward the new shelter as well as freezing the reactor
permanently to prevent further ecological damage. 

Thirty-one people died within the first two months from illnesses caused by
radioactivity, but there is heated debate over the subsequent toll. A report
from the U.N. health agency last year estimated that about 9,300 people will
die from cancers caused by Chernobyl's radiation. Some groups, such as
Greenpeace, insist the toll could be 10 times higher. 

The EBRD is the largest financial investor in Ukraine, having invested in 77
projects in sectors ranging from banking to infrastructure to small and
medium-sized enterprises. 

 
27/07/07 - News section 

Sex for the motherland: Russian youths encouraged to procreate at camp 
By EDWARD LUCAS 

Remember the mammoths, say the clean-cut organisers at the youth camp's mass
wedding. "They became extinct because they did not have enough sex. That
must not happen to Russia". 

Obediently, couples move to a special section of dormitory tents arranged in
a heart-shape and called the Love Oasis, where they can start procreating
for the motherland. 

With its relentlessly upbeat tone, bizarre ideas and tight control, it
sounds like a weird indoctrination session for a phoney religious cult. 

But this organisation - known as "Nashi", meaning "Ours" - is youth movement
run by Vladimir Putin's Kremlin that has become a central part of Russian
political life. 

Nashi's annual camp, 200 miles outside Moscow, is attended by 10,000
uniformed youngsters and involves two weeks of lectures and physical
fitness. 

Attendance is monitored via compulsory electronic badges and anyone who
misses three events is expelled. So are drinkers; alcohol is banned. But sex
is encouraged, and condoms are nowhere on sale. 

Bizarrely, young women are encouraged to hand in thongs and other skimpy
underwear - supposedly a cause of sterility - and given more wholesome and
substantial undergarments. 

Twenty-five couples marry at the start of the camp's first week and ten more
at the start of the second. These mass weddings, the ultimate expression of
devotion to the motherland, are legal and conducted by a civil official. 

Attempting to raise Russia's dismally low birthrate even by
eccentric-seeming means might be understandable. Certainly, the country's
demographic outlook is dire. The hard-drinking, hardsmoking and
disease-ridden population is set to plunge by a million a year in the next
decade. 

But the real aim of the youth camp - and the 100,000-strong movement behind
it - is not to improve Russia's demographic profile, but to attack
democracy. 

Under Mr Putin, Russia is sliding into fascism, with state control of the
economy, media, politics and society becoming increasingly heavy-handed. And
Nashi, along with other similar youth movements, such as 'Young Guard', and
'Young Russia', is in the forefront of the charge. 

At the start, it was all too easy to mock. I attended an early event run by
its predecessor, 'Walking together', in the heart of Moscow in 2000. A
motley collection of youngsters were collecting 'unpatriotic' works of
fiction for destruction. 

It was sinister in theory, recalling the Nazis' book-burning in the 1930s,
but it was laughable in practice. There was no sign of ordinary members of
the public handing in books (the copies piled on the pavement had been
brought by the organisers). 

Once the television cameras had left, the event organisers admitted that
they were not really volunteers, but being paid by "sponsors". The idea that
Russia's anarchic, apathetic youth would ever be attracted into a
disciplined mass movement in support of their president - what critics
called a "Putinjugend", recalling the "Hitlerjugend" (German for "Hitler
Youth") - seemed fanciful. 

How wrong we were. Life for young people in Russia without connections is a
mixture of inadequate and corrupt education, and a choice of boring dead-end
jobs. Like the Hitler Youth and the Soviet Union's Young Pioneers, Nashi and
its allied movements offer not just excitement, friendship and a sense of
purpose - but a leg up in life, too. 

Nashi's senior officials - known, in an eerie echo of the Soviet era, as
"Commissars" - get free places at top universities. Thereafter, they can
expect good jobs in politics or business - which in Russia nowadays, under
the Kremlin's crony capitalism, are increasingly the same thing. 

Nashi and similar outfits are the Kremlin's first line of defence against
its greatest fear: real democracy. Like the sheep chanting "Four legs good,
two legs bad" in George Orwell's Animal Farm, they can intimidate through
noise and numbers. 

Nashi supporters drown out protests by Russia's feeble and divided
democratic opposition and use violence to drive them off the streets. 

The group's leaders insist that the only connection to officialdom is
loyalty to the president. If so, they seem remarkably well-informed. 

In July 2006, the British ambassador, Sir Anthony Brenton, infuriated the
Kremlin by attending an opposition meeting. For months afterwards, he was
noisily harassed by groups of Nashi supporters demanding that he
"apologise". With uncanny accuracy, the hooligans knew his movements in
advance - a sign of official tip-offs. 

Even when Nashi flagrantly breaks the law, the authorities do not intervene.
After Estonia enraged Russia by moving a Sovietera war memorial in April,
Nashi led the blockade of Estonia's Moscow embassy. It daubed the building
with graffiti, blasted it with Stalinera military music, ripped down the
Estonian flag and attacked a visiting ambassador's car. The Moscow police,
who normally stamp ruthlessly on public protest, stood by. 

Nashi fits perfectly into the Kremlin's newly-minted ideology of "Sovereign
democracy". This is not the mind-numbing jargon of Marxism-Leninism, but a
lightweight collection of cliches and slogans promoting Russia's supposed
unique political and spiritual culture. 

It is strongly reminiscent of the Tsarist era slogan: "Autocracy, Orthodoxy
and Nationality". 

The similarities to both the Soviet and Tsarist eras are striking. Communist
ideologues once spent much of their time explaining why their party deserved
its monopoly of power, even though the promised utopia seemed indefinitely
delayed. 

Today, the Kremlin's ideology chief Vladislav Surkov is trying to explain
why questioning the crooks and spooks who run Russia is not just mistaken,
but treacherous. 

Yet, by comparison with other outfits, Nashi looks relatively civilised. Its
racism and prejudice is implied, but not trumpeted. Other pro-Kremlin youth
groups are hounding gays and foreigners off the streets of Moscow. Mestnye
[The Locals] recently distributed leaflets urging Muscovites to boycott
non-Russian cab drivers. 

These showed a young blonde Russian refusing a ride from a swarthy,
beetle-browed taxi driver, under the slogan: "We're not going the same way."


Such unofficial xenophobia matches the official stance. On April 1, a decree
explicitly backed by Mr Putin banned foreigners from trading in Russia's
retail markets. By some estimates, 12m people are working illegally in
Russia. 

Those who hoped that Russia's first post-totalitarian generation would be
liberal, have been dissapointed. Although explicit support for extremist and
racist groups is in the low single figures, support for racist sentiments is
mushrooming. 

Slogans such as "Russia for the Russians" now attract the support of half of
the population. Echoing Kremlin propaganda, Nashi denounced Estonians as
"fascist", for daring to say that they find Nazi and Soviet memorials
equally repugnant. But, in truth, it is in Russia that fascism is all too
evident. 

The Kremlin sees no role for a democratic opposition, denouncing its leaders
as stooges and traitors. Sadly, most Russians agree: a recent poll showed
that a majority believed that opposition parties should not be allowed to
take power. 

Just as the Nazis in 1930s rewrote Germany's history, the Putin Kremlin is
rewriting Russia's. It has rehaabilitated Stalin, the greatest massmurderer
of the 20th century. And it is demonising Boris Yeltsin, Russia's first
democratically-elected president. That he destroyed totalitarianism is
ignored. Instead, he is denounced for his "weak" pro-Western policies. 

While distorting its own history, the Kremlin denounces other countries. Mr
Putin was quick to blame Britain's "colonial mentality" for our government's
request that Russia try to find a legal means of extraditing Andrei Lugovoi,
the prime suspect in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko. 

Yet the truth is that Britain, like most Western countries, flagellates
itself for the crimes of the past. Indeed, British schoolchildren rarely
learn anything positive about their country's empire. And, if Mr Putin has
his way, Russian pupils will learn nothing bad about the Soviet empire,
which was far bloodier, more brutal - and more recent. 

A new guide for history teachers - explicitly endorsed by Mr Putin - brushes
off Stalin's crimes. It describes him as "the most successful leader of the
USSR". But it skates over the colossal human cost - 25m people were shot and
starved in the cause of communism. 

"Political repression was used to mobilise not only rank-and-file citizens
but also the ruling elite," it says. In other words, Stalin wanted to make
the country strong, so he may have been a bit harsh at times. At any time
since the collapse of Soviet totalitarianism in the late 1980s, that would
have seemed a nauseating whitewash. Now, it is treated as bald historical
fact. 

If Stalin made mistakes, so what? Lots of people make mistakes. 

"Problematic pages in our history exist," Mr Putin said last week. But: "we
have less than some countries. And ours are not as terrible as those of some
others." He compared the Great Terror of 1937, when 700,000 people were
murdered in a purge by Stalin's secret police, to the atom bomb on
Hiroshima. 

The comparison is preposterous. A strong argument can be made that by ending
the war quickly, the atom bombs saved countless lives. 

Franklin D Roosevelt and Harry Truman-may have failed to realise that
nuclear weapons would one day endanger humanity's survival. But, unlike
Stalin, they were not genocidal maniacs. 

As the new cold war deepens, Mr Putin echoes, consciously or unconsciously,
the favourite weapon of Soviet propagandists in the last one. 

Asked about Afghanistan, they would cite Vietnam. Castigated for the plight
of Soviet Jews, they would complain with treacly sincerity about
discrimination against American blacks. Every blot on the Soviet record was
matched by something, real or imagined, that the West had done. 

But the contrasts even then were absurd. When the American administration
blundered into Vietnam, hundreds of thousands of people protested in the
heart of Washington. When eight extraordinarily brave Soviet dissidents
tried to demonstrate in Red Square against the invasion of Czechoslovakia,
in 1968, they were instantly arrested and spent many years in labour camps. 

For the east European countries with first-hand experience of Stalinist
terror, the Kremlin's rewriting of history could hardly be more scary. Not
only does Russia see no reason to apologise for their suffering under
Kremlin rule, it now sees the collapse of communism not as a time of
liberation, but as an era of pitiable weakness. 

Russia barely commemorates even the damage it did to itself, let alone the
appalling suffering inflicted on other people. Nashi is both a symptom of
the way Russia is going - and a means of entrenching the drift to fascism. 

Terrifyingly, the revived Soviet view of history is now widely held in
Russia. A poll this week of Russian teenagers showed that a majority believe
that Stalin did more good things than bad. 

If tens of thousands of uniformed German youngsters were marching across
Germany in support of an authoritarian Fuhrer, baiting foreigners and
praising Hitler, alarm bells would be jangling all across Europe. So why
aren't they ringing about Nashi? 

Edward Lucas is author of the forthcoming The New Cold War And How To Win
It. 

  _____  

Dear Colleague Letter to Members of the House of Representatives Urging
Cosponsorship of Resolution on Ukraine Elections (H. Con. Res 189)
Introduced July 23 by Helsinki Commission Chairman Rep. Alcee L. Hastings
(D-FL)

Cosponsors to date:  Reps. Louise Slaughter (D-NY), Doris Matsui (D-CA),
Michael McNulty (D-NY), Jim Gerlach (R-PA), Sander Levin (D-MI), Darrell
Issa (R-CA), Corrine Brown (D-FL), Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), Danny Davis (D-IL). 

Congress of the United States

House of Representatives

Washington, DC  20515

 

  July 30, 2007

Support Resolution on Ukraine Elections

Cosponsor H. Con. Res 189: Urging all sides to the political crisis in
Ukraine to abide by the May 27, 2007 agreement which calls for a new round
of parliamentary elections on September 30, 2007, and to ensure a free a
fair, transparent democratic system in Ukraine based on the rule of law 

 Cosponsors:  Louise Slaughter, Doris Matsui, Michael McNulty, Jim Gerlach,
Sander Levin, Darrell Issa   

 

Dear Colleague:

 

Please join me in supporting democratic processes and the rule of law in
Ukraine by cosponsoring H. Con. Res. 189, which urges all sides to abide by
the agreement signed by Ukraine's leadership on May 27, providing for a new
round or parliamentary elections to be held on September 30, and encouraging
the holding of these elections in a free, fair and transparent manner in
keeping with Ukraine's commitments as a participating State of the
Organizations for Security and Cooperation in Europe  (OSCE) . This
resolution is a demonstration of Congress' interest, concern, and support
for Ukraine as that strategically important country perseveres towards full
democracy and the rule of law. 

 

A political dispute between Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime
Minister Viktor Yanukovich -- rooted in weak constitutional deliniations of
their powers -- resulted in a political crisis in April and May.  After
weeks of tense standoff,  Yushchenko, Yanukovich and Parliamentary Speaker
Oleksandr Moroz reached an agreement calling for early elections to be held
on September 30.  

 

Ukraine has made important progress since the 2004 Orange Revolution, but
its democratic institutions and the rule of law are still emerging and lack
in their ability to safeguard democratic gains.  It is important for the
September 30 elections to be held in a free, fair, open and transparent
manner -- following the pattern of Ukraine's last two elections.  While
democratic elections will not, in and of themselves, resolve all of the
challenges facing Ukraine in strengthening the rule of law and delineating
power among branches of government, they are a critical stepping-stone in
Ukraine's democratic development.  

 

Democratic consolidation and the rule of law will enhance Ukraine's
aspirations for full integration with the West and, improtantly, serve as a
positive model for other former Soviet countries, many of whom are in the
grip of authoritarianism.   

 

Please have your staff contact Orest Deychakiwsky or Mark Hadzewycz at the
Helsinki Commission at 5-1901 or e-mail
<mailto:orest.deychak at mail.house.gov> orest.deychak at mail.house.gov regarding
cosponsorship.

 

Below please find the text of the resolution.  

 

Sincerely,

 /s/

Alcee L. Hastings

For text of resolution, full introductory statement, see Helsinki Commission
website:   <http://www.csce.gov> www.csce.gov

Constituents can contact their Representatives and urge that he/she
cosponsor H. Con.Res.189, or thank your Representative if he/she is already
a cosponsor.

 

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