Elections Scheduled

Last Thursday Verkhovna Rada approved a decision scheduling the next presidential elections for October 31, 2004. The decision was supported by 429 people’s deputies out of the 440 participating in the voting. In the opinion of President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma, expressed in his annual message to the parliament, presidential elections 2004 are to secure the continuity of the state policy in the social, political, and economic spheres. “Recognizing the need for certain corrections to the state policy according to the program ideological aims of Ukraine’s next president, we have to do everything possible to secure the continuity of the state’s course as an indispensable condition for preserving positive achievements and strengthening favorable tendencies of our social development,” the message states. Interfax Ukraine also quotes President Kuchma as saying that conducting fair, open, and democratic elections should be viewed as one of the key factors for speeding up the processes of European integration, in part, establishing efficient relations with the great democracies, primarily the EU and its influential members, as well as the US.