Kuchma and Symonenko have not yet accepted the Тfair-playУ invitation
The political life of this country has seen an event unthinkable in a normal country with well- established democracy. But that it has occurred in a country with the clearly pronounced features of a police state is a good and hope- inspiring sign. Presidential candidates Yevhen Marchuk, Oleksandr Moroz, and Oleksandr Tkachenko have signed an agreement on fair elections. Petro Symonenko was reported to be absent for understandable reasons.
The agreement says: “We, candidates for President of Ukraine, being aware of the historic importance of the current moment and of the impact of the events occurring in connection with the presidential elections of 1999 on the further destiny of the Ukrainian state, despite different views, political persuasions and election programs, adhering to the principles of Honor, Conscience and Probity, respecting the dignity, rights and freedoms of every citizen, recognizing the right of every human to trustworthy information, striving to create the atmosphere of a free and conscious choice and its implementation, have entered into this agreement on fair elections and hereby assume the following obligations.”
To simplify matters, the signatories then promise to follow the election laws and the Constitution, not to apply to each other any dirty methods of struggle, not to meddle in the private life of the rivals and their kith-and-kin, to exclude violence, deception, threats, and bribery in the work with voters, to thwart any attempts to involve criminal structures in the organization of the election campaign, to help each other organize the public monitoring of the course of the election campaign, to work in a civilized way with the mass media, and to seek live TV and radio debates for all candidates...This agreement is open for signature by all candidates for president of Ukraine.
The sense of the signed document is not perhaps totally clear to the international public, which does not live under “African democracy.” But the select parliamentary commission headed by Yeliashkevych, during the session of which the Agreement was signed, invited representatives of the embassies (G 7 plus Russia), the UN, and OSCE quite on purpose: when the candidates were giving examples of their activists being persecuted for political persuasions at the hands of police and tax administration (Mr. Marchuk suggested the latter also be considered a coercive agency), the list of unlawful acts by the current authorities could give a shock to anybody. And the less one knows the Ukrainian realities, the greater the shock. So it is beyond a doubt that the action will have far-reaching repercussions in foreign, if not in Ukrainian, circles.
Some people have already reduced the significance of the Agreement to a “non-aggression pact” between individual candidates. But the alphabet-order list of names printed below the document begins with the line “Kuchma.” And in any case, whether or not the President will sign it, the opposition candidates will be the beneficiaries: either there will be a “democratic” change in the course of the elections or nobody — in this country and abroad — will ever harbor doubts about the true — cynical, crude, primitive, and dangerous — aspirations of the current authorities. In other words, Mr. Kuchma has been asked if he is able to renounce dirty, shameful, and unlawful methods of struggle, when the object of encroachments is, in the long run, not the rivals, but the constitutional rights of citizens to the freedom of information, persuasion and choice.
The political life of this country has seen an event unthinkable in a normal country with well- established democracy. But that it has occurred in a country with the clearly pronounced features of a police state is a good and hope- inspiring sign. Presidential candidates Yevhen Marchuk, Oleksandr Moroz, and Oleksandr Tkachenko have signed an agreement on fair elections. Petro Symonenko was reported to be absent for understandable reasons.
The agreement says: “We, candidates for President of Ukraine, being aware of the historic importance of the current moment and of the impact of the events occurring in connection with the presidential elections of 1999 on the further destiny of the Ukrainian state, despite different views, political persuasions and election programs, adhering to the principles of Honor, Conscience and Probity, respecting the dignity, rights and freedoms of every citizen, recognizing the right of every human to trustworthy information, striving to create the atmosphere of a free and conscious choice and its implementation, have entered into this agreement on fair elections and hereby assume the following obligations.”
To simplify matters, the signatories then promise to follow the election laws and the Constitution, not to apply to each other any dirty methods of struggle, not to meddle in the private life of the rivals and their kith-and-kin, to exclude violence, deception, threats, and bribery in the work with voters, to thwart any attempts to involve criminal structures in the organization of the election campaign, to help each other organize the public monitoring of the course of the election campaign, to work in a civilized way with the mass media, and to seek live TV and radio debates for all candidates...This agreement is open for signature by all candidates for president of Ukraine.
The sense of the signed document is not perhaps totally clear to the international public, which does not live under “African democracy.” But the select parliamentary commission headed by Yeliashkevych, during the session of which the Agreement was signed, invited representatives of the embassies (G 7 plus Russia), the UN, and OSCE quite on purpose: when the candidates were giving examples of their activists being persecuted for political persuasions at the hands of police and tax administration (Mr. Marchuk suggested the latter also be considered a coercive agency), the list of unlawful acts by the current authorities could give a shock to anybody. And the less one knows the Ukrainian realities, the greater the shock. So it is beyond a doubt that the action will have far-reaching repercussions in foreign, if not in Ukrainian, circles.
Some people have already reduced the significance of the Agreement to a “non-aggression pact” between individual candidates. But the alphabet-order list of names printed below the document begins with the line “Kuchma.” And in any case, whether or not the President will sign it, the opposition candidates will be the beneficiaries: either there will be a “democratic” change in the course of the elections or nobody — in this country and abroad — will ever harbor doubts about the true — cynical, crude, primitive, and dangerous — aspirations of the current authorities. In other words, Mr. Kuchma has been asked if he is able to renounce dirty, shameful, and unlawful methods of struggle, when the object of encroachments is, in the long run, not the rivals, but the constitutional rights of citizens to the freedom of information, persuasion and choice.
Newspaper output №:
№29, (1999)Section
Day After Day
