Anti-Kuchma protesters adopt resolution addressed to president

The anti-Kuchma protest campaign - led by Yulia Tymoshenko, Oleksander Moroz, Petro Symonenko and Viktor Yushchenko - adopted a strongly worded resolution. RFE/RL Poland, Belarus and Ukraine Report released the text below, based on the Ukrainska Pravda website.

We appeal to you, President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma, with the following:

During the years of your actual one-person rule, Ukraine has lost 4 million of its population, more than six million citizens are looking for rescue from abroad, [and] the socioeconomic development basis of the state has been ruined. The state and society have been pushed 30 to 50 years backward. Corruption, thievery, violence, moral degeneration have become characteristic traits of the people's life.

You became the president of Ukraine in an illegal way.

You are involved in criminal offenses.

You are responsible for the catastrophic decrease in Ukraine's population.

You have usurped power [and] created an undemocratic, criminal system of government that operates outside the boundaries of morality, law, and honor.

More than 70 percent of Ukraine's population does not respect, trust, or support you!

The people of Ukraine cannot, do not want to, and will not, live in this way any longer!

We insist: Leonid Kuchma, you have no other way out except to make an act of repentance before the Ukrainian people and immediately leave the post of president.

For this purpose, provided that some trace of conscience and responsibility is left in you, you have to return to Ukraine [editor's note: Kuchma was in Austria during the rally] and resign.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, September 22, 2002, No. 38, Vol. LXX

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