Yushchenko denounces negative tone of Party of the Regions campaign (03/19/06)

Yushchenko denounces negative tone of Party of the Regions campaign

by Zenon Zawada
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - President Viktor Yushchenko criticized the negative tone of the Party of the Regions election campaign, stating that the party lacks an agenda that can intellectually compete with the government's program.

"This demonstrates a weak morality," President Yushchenko said at a March 14 press conference in Kyiv. "Politics is won by those who uniquely communicate, command knowledge and are able to offer a means of how to make things better."

Throughout the parliamentary election season, the Party of the Regions has bombarded Ukrainian television with negative ads that emphasize how things have changed for the worse, citing the current government's inability to provide jobs and control inflation.

The president mocked such ads in which "a funereal bass voice talks about how hard it is to live in this country, how bad unemployment is, in a voice without character, the voice of an abnormal person."

Such ads have made the 2006 election campaign "uninteresting, from the point of view of campaign platforms, which are marked by primitivism, shady ventures and black PR," he said.

Seated under the words "Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Choice," which were carefully placed against a background wall, President Yushchenko answered questions posed by reporters, many visiting from different regions of Ukraine.

He stressed the successes of his first year in office, specifically citing Ukraine's improved relations with Western powers.

"In the past five months we have been recognized as a free market economy by the United States and the European Union," the president said. "Had that existed before?"

The U.S. Congress's recent moves to graduate Ukraine from the Jackson-Vanik Amendment will allow for exports to grow by $200 million, Mr. Yushchenko said.

Ukraine's metallurgical, chemical and, to some extent, its coal industry will gain access to the U.S market, he said. Graduation from Jackson-Vanik will also free Ukraine from more than 1,000 anti-dumping measures that have cost the Ukrainian economy about $2 billion in potential trade, the president added.

The recent U.S.-Ukraine agreement establishing new bilateral trade protocols will increase Ukrainian exports by an additional $500 million or $600 million, Mr. Yushchenko said.

Along with the U.S. recognition of Ukraine's market economy status, Jackson-Vanik graduation will enable Ukraine to regain a "series of systematic competitions" that Ukraine lost in the U.S. market in 1996.

"Considering the past 15 years, these changes are radical for Ukrainian trade," Mr. Yushchenko said. "They are changes of the highest quality."

Ukraine hasn't progressed in trade relations only with the West, but it has also signed about 20 agreements related to the Single Economic Space, none of which existed before his presidency.

"What is in this that's 'Ne Tak'?" Mr. Yushchenko asked, referring to the political bloc (whose name translates to Not So) led by former President Leonid Kravchuk that is advocating Ukraine's membership in the Single Economic Space.

Ukraine also signed bilateral trade protocols with China under his leadership, the president said.

Another example Mr. Yushchenko cited of Ukraine's improving economic situation is the fact that immigrants from Asia and Africa are even starting to come to Ukraine.

Ukraine is currently home to 14,000 refugees, he said.

Mr. Yushchenko had a stern and irritated response to a Crimean reporter who asked whether the rights of Russian speakers were being curtailed. The president noted that the Autonomous Republic of Crimea is part of a Ukrainian state, where the language of the nation's roots should be respected.

He pointed out there are 96 Hungarian schools in Ukraine (mostly in Zakarpattia), but only a single Ukrainian school in the entire Autonomous Republic of Crimea.

The government is funding all the Russian schools in Crimea, from the elementary to the university level, which is a demonstration of Ukraine's unusual tolerance, Mr. Yushchenko said.

Use of the Ukrainian language doesn't have to come at the expense of the Russian language, but as a necessary supplement, he said.

"I am sure that my children speak Russian," Mr. Yushchenko told the reporter. "I don't know whether your children speak Ukrainian."

In response to Our Ukraine's campaign slogan "Don't Betray the Maidan," one reporter asked Mr. Yushchenko whether he thought forming a parliamentary majority with the Party of the Regions would be a betrayal of the maidan, the site of the Orange Revolution.

In his response, Mr. Yushchenko didn't rule out forming a coalition with any of his current political competitors.

The guiding ideal of the maidan was the primacy of Ukraine's national interests above all others, the president said. Therefore, Mr. Yushchenko said he's looking to form a parliamentary coalition with any political forces interested in promoting that one guiding principle. Coalition partners will also have to value freedom of speech, human rights and democratic principles.

In an indirect slap at the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, however, the president said it was the behavior of certain Orange political forces during the New Year's natural gas crisis that discredited the maidan.

Personalities are to blame for the current split in the Orange political forces, not policies, Mr. Yushchenko said. "The skepticism among voters isn't related to policies," he said. "People don't like the behavior of those representing the Orange team."

Rather than fumbling politics, Mr. Yushchenko said he made a personnel mistake in his first Cabinet of Ministers. "A part of those who stood next to me on the maidan were first-class actors there, but, upon entering their government offices, they exchanged the nation's ideals for base, primitive conveniences," he said.

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