More and More Presidential Come Out for Fair Elections

Another five candidates have joined the agreement on fair elections. On September 20 the agreement was signed in the Ukrainian Parliament by Oleksandr Rzhavsky, Volodymyr Oliynyk, Mykola Haber, Oleksandr Bazyliuk, and Yuri Karmazin, Interfax-Ukraine reports.

Earlier, the agreement was signed by three candidates: Yevhen Marchuk, Oleksandr Moroz, and Oleksandr Tkachenko. In addition, the document was also initialed by Yuri Kostenko. The agreement is also open for signing by other candidates, but candidates Leonid Kuchma, Hennady Udovenko, Petro Symonenko, and Natalia Vitrenko have already spoken out against signing.

September 20 was also significant in the fact that another nine presidential candidates signed another agreement, On Joint Participation in the Non- Governmental Publication of Vote Count Results in the Elections of the President of Ukraine in 1999. This document was signed by Messrs. Bazyliuk, Haber, Karmazin, Marchuk, Moroz, Oliynyk, Rzhavsky, and Tkachenko. Moreover, chairman of the parliamentary ad hoc election monitoring commission Oleksandr Yeliashkevych reported the agreement had also been signed by Communist leader Petro Symonenko.

In accordance with the agreement, its signatories pledge to collect rapidly and hand the records and record copies of voting results found by constituency election commissions, campaign managers, and official observers, who represent the presidential candidates, over to special computerized data-gathering centers and the parliamentary ad hoc commission.

The candidates also undertook to conduct the whole process of collecting, processing and transferring information in an open and transparent way, as well as to immediately publish the current and consolidated voting data in a single computer center.

Another three candidates are expected to join this agreement soon: Vitaly Kononov, Yuri Kostenko and Vasyl Onopenko, who, according to Mr. Yeliashkevych, have initialed the text. Candidates Natalia Vitrenko and Hennady Udovenko are also said not to be opposing the agreement, but they have not yet expressed the wish to join. Only Mr. Kuchma's position still remains unknown.

But, on the other hand, it is really pretty clear to everybody.