Warn the Kaniv Four

Presidential candidates Yevhen Marchuk, Volodymyr Oliynyk, Oleksandr Moroz, and Oleksandr Tkachenko, who signed the Kaniv accord, declared on September 7 that they will not allow the presidential elections to be bungled and people deceived by rigged returns.

Their statement, circulated in Parliament, expresses serious concern about the formation of territorial election committees. The current regime, stress the authors, »took advantage of the local authorities' political shortsightedness and seized the key posts on the territorial election committees, so as to be free to falsify the results of the elections of the President of Ukraine.» Most oblast councils, the document continues, »have been subjected to moral and psychological pressure by of the presidentially controlled media assuring in a chorus that President Kuchma's ship is unsinkable.»

As reported earlier, 80 of the 225 TEC chairmen are members of Leonid Kuchma's election team. »This approach testifies to a blatant violation of the main principle of democratic elections: equal opportunities,» the statement points out. At the same time, of the candidacies proposed by other presidential candidates as TEC chairmen, 16 were appointed for Oleksandr Tkachenko; 14 for Oleksandr Moroz; 12 for Volodymyr Oliynyk, and 10 for Yevhen Marchuk. Total: 52. »This statistic testifies to a situation artificially tilted in Leonid Kuchma's favor.» The reader should recall that CEC Chairman Mykhailo Riabets, explained this variation of equal opportunity by referring to the law that does not contain any party affiliation qualifications with regard to TEC chairmanship.

The presidential candidates voiced their concern about this alignment of forces as being capable of »torpedoing the election of the new President of Ukraine, preventing Leonid Kuchma from losing the campaign, and automatically securing his reelection.»