Landslide for Omelchenko

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.