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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

Landslide for Omelchenko

8 June, 1999 - 00:00

By Iryna HAVRYLOVA, The Day

The results of the Kyiv mayoral elections are as follows: Oleksandr Omelchenko
and Hryhory Surkis received 76.4% and 16.5% of the votes, respectively.

Presidential candidate Yevhen Marchuk characterized the convincing victory
of the current chief of the Kyiv City Administration Mr. Omelchenko as
a defeat for Leonid Kuchma's team, Interfax-Ukraine reports. He thinks
this "signals a complete moral and political failure of the strategists
who worked out Mr. Kuchma's current presidential campaign, as well as of
the United Social Democrats." In his words, "in spite of the involvement
of the big money of information moguls, well-known personalities of sports,
culture, and politics, including former President Leonid Kravchuk, and
even criminal elements, the mechanism of Kuchma's strategists did not work."

According to Mr. Marchuk, Kyiv "graphically showed the unpopularity
of the current President's policies." In his words, "if the [presidential]
elections were held today, they would be far more disastrous than it was
forecast by the paid polling agencies." He stressed that the hope of Kuchma's
team to fix the elections would not come true because it is very difficult
to manipulate public opinion in the conditions when 82% of the population
oppose the current regime and its socioeconomic course.

COMMENTARY

People's Deputy of Ukraine Hryhory Omelchenko has called the results
of the Kyiv mayoral elections "the beginning of the end of the ruling clique
that still governs Ukraine." In an interview with The Day's Danylo
KLIAKHIN
, he noted that "Kyivans have politically knocked out the oligarchs
and the politicians from the President's closest entourage." Extrapolating
the results of the current elections onto the presidential ones, Mr. Omelchenko
stressed that he "would even advise the President of our state not to run
for another term in order not to experience in October the shame that the
oligarchs are now experiencing."

Verkhovna Rada Speaker Oleksandr Tkachenko noted that many people were
"shocked" by the election campaign and canvassing. He explained that the
candidates had stooped to mudslinging.

Representative of the Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) group Oleksandr Turchynov
noted in an interview that even if there had been some violations during
the elections, they could not have told on the election results.

Mr. Surkis's performance during the Kyiv mayoral elections "is not a
total defeat" that could depress his team, said Mr. Kravchuk, former President
and a United Social Democrat leader.

Mr. Kravchuk believes 16.52% of votes is "not a bad result, if we allow
for the fact that the mayoral election campaign was conducted in a very
short time."

NDP faction representative Roman Bezsmertny also thinks it senseless
to speak of fixing or to put the blame on any candidate, for the vote margin
was very wide. If, the deputy said, the defeated candidates file a challenge,
all will regard it as an attempt to challenge the election results."

Representative of the Center Left faction Ivan Chyzh has also expressed
the idea that it is not necessary "to open any court cases," for that will
impair both the winners and the losers and, what is more, Kyiv itself.
He also underlined there are no reasons to suspect any tampering with the
election had occurred.

 

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