Translated material
Tymoshenko as the last samurai
A propaganda campaign has begun in Ukraine
In Ukraine, the campaign campaign of parties and blocs participating in the parliamentary elections, which will take place on March 26, officially began yesterday. The right to speak first went to the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc (BYuT). Yesterday's video of the BYuT leader, who is competing with President Viktor Yushchenko for the title of leader of last year's “Orange Revolution,” was eloquently titled: “Yulia is the last samurai.”According to sociologists, six parties out of 45 registered by the Central Election Commission will win the elections to the Rada. According to the National Institute for Strategic Studies under the President of Ukraine, the opposition Party of Regions of ex-Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych is in the lead (24%). In second and third places are the “orange” - the presidential bloc “Our Ukraine” (22%) and BYuT (15%). The Rada will also include the Communist Party (9%), the Socialist Party (8%) and the People's Bloc of Rada Speaker Vladimir Lytvyn (5%). The ratings of the leading political parties in surveys differ by 5-7%, depending on which of them orders the social research.
Yesterday's political advertising was not the first in Ukraine. Parties, including opposition ones, have been running paid advertisements on TV and radio for several months. Posters with the faces of famous politicians are plastered on vehicles, fences and even public toilets. “A number of forces began to conduct their unofficial propaganda campaign about a year ago, others, in particular the Party of Regions, last fall,” Vladimir Fesenko, head of the Ukrainian Penta center, told Vremya Novostey.
The intensity of election passions is high, and therefore rivals and their supporters sometimes go beyond traditional campaigning. For example, Ukrainian media reported that ex-Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, as during the 2004 presidential campaign, became the victim of an “assassination attempt”: one of the voters tried to throw an egg at him. Progressive socialist Natalia Vitrenko, whom politicians call the “Konotop witch” behind her back (the residents of Konotop voted for her in the parliamentary elections before last), received a mortar with a broom as a gift from the voters of one of the Ukrainian cities. President Yushchenko also got it. Nestor Shufrich, one of the leaders of the opposition bloc “Not So!”, at a crowded rally called the president an obscene expression because everything in the country is “wrong.”
Yesterday, Speaker Vladimir Lytvyn proposed to consider in the Rada the issue of moving the Constitutional Court (CC) from Kyiv to Kharkov, the former capital of Ukraine. This is a clear setback for Viktor Yushchenko, who accuses parliament of blocking the work of the Constitutional Court - the “arbiter” in conflicts between the president and legislators.
“The idea of dispersing government bodies, in particular moving the Constitutional Court to Kharkov, was put forward during the era of ex-president Kuchma,” Mr. Fesenko noted to Vremya Novostey. He explained that Kharkov is “something like the capital of Ukrainian jurisprudence,” since the relevant universities are located there. At the same time, by moving the Constitutional Court to Kharkov, “the Rada would distance the judicial and executive powers in Ukraine.” The president, representatives of his staff and the prime minister “would lose the opportunity to influence the decisions of the Constitutional Court through personal contacts,” Fesenko believes.