Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych looks set for victory in a national election this weekend, despite his jailed rival, former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, calling on voters to stop an imminent “dictatorship.”
Yanukovych’s Party of the Regions and a union of opposition forces backing Tymoshenko held final public rallies on Friday in the capital Kiev ahead of today’s poll for a new parliament.
No opinion polls have been published since Oct. 18, under an official information blackout. Earlier polls showed Regions leading the joint opposition, which includes Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna (“Fatherland”) party, and a liberal party headed by world heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko.
Photo: Reuters
Yanukovych’s party leads, despite the government’s unpopularity because of tax and pensions policies and its failure to stamp out corruption.
The former Soviet republic also looks isolated after rows with the US and the EU over Tymoshenko, and with Russia over gas.
There is also the question of what judgement international observers will hand down after monitoring the election.
Ukraine’s economy is vulnerable to falling demand for steel and other exports while the IMF froze lending last year when Kiev balked at painful reform. Commentators nevertheless expect Yanukovych’s pro-business Regions, bankrolled by wealthy industrialists and able to draw on state and regional facilities and resources, to hold on to a majority in the 450-seat assembly.
“We have rebuilt the country, we have achieved stability,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, formal leader of the Regions, told a rally.
Azarov, who heads the Regions’ ticket, was joined by several other party leaders and a Ukrainian pop star who is No. 2 on the party list. His government has raised public sector wages and pensions ahead of the vote, recovering some of the lost support at the cost of widening the budget deficit.
The Regions have promised to make Russian an official state language alongside Ukrainian — a move aimed at winning back disenchanted supporters in Russian-speaking areas of the east and south, but alienated voters elsewhere.
The opposition has warned that a Regions victory will usher in authoritarian rule and policies tailored to further enrich business “oligarchs” and Yanukovych’s trusted inner circle.
Tymoshenko, 51, a political firebrand in her heyday, on Thursday called on voters to throw out the Regions, warning Yanukovych could “establish a dictatorship and will never again give up power by peaceful means.”
Her lieutenant Oleh Turchinov opened the rally on Friday, which took place just 500m away from that of the Regions, but was much more sombre, by reading out her same address.
Another Batkivshchyna leader, Anatoly Hrytsenko, acknowledged the Regions’ lead, but urged his supporters to reach out to undecided voters.
“We can break their ratings and their plans. Twenty percent of voters have yet to decide who to vote for,” he said.
Klitschko has pledged to work to stamp out endemic corruption in the country of 46 million. He and his UDAR (“Punch”) party, which has surged in ratings, are a wild card in the poll. He has turned his back on any alliance with the Regions and says he will side with the united opposition led by former Ukrainian minister of economy Arseny Yatsenyuk.
However, the fact Klitschko declined to sign a pre-election coalition agreement with Yatsenyuk-led forces has engendered suspicion among the opposition.
Of the 450 seats in the single-chamber parliament, 225 will be filled through voting by party lists — where the voter casts a ballot for a party, which presents a list of candidates.
The other half will be decided by voting for individual candidates on a first-past-the-post basis — a feature reintroduced by the Regions that is assumed to favor the party.
International monitors include a 700-member team from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
The OSCE will deliver its verdict tomorrow. A positive assessment could improve the international image of Yanukovych before Ukraine takes over the chair of the human rights and security body in January.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing