Ukraine's approaching parliamentary elections have prompted the candidates to come alive. The representatives of the ruling party and the opposition have exchanged sharp statements. They are using TV, the Internet and got engaged in the traditional sleaze war.
In its reserve, the opposition has no positive results to show when it was in power. Ukrainian Prime Minister Nikolai Azarov stated this during the Cabinet meeting. Ukrainians associate the downswing in the country's economy with the time when the current opposition was in power, he said. At the time, the national currency grivna collapsed, people could not get their money from their bank accounts and salaries and pensions depreciated. Is the opposition calling people to return to those days? However, people need real results rather than fairy tales. The country is improving slowly but not as fast as we wish, Nikolai Azarov said, as reported by The Voice of Russia.
U.S Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton have voiced in their support for the opposition in their article in The New York Times. They warned Kiev that "Ukraine now stands at an important juncture".
However, Clinton and Ashton still hope that the voting will take place at least at the level of 2010 presidential elections which observers called free and fair elections. However, they are worried that the democratic elections are under threat because the former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko and former Interior Minister Yuri Lutsenko are not taking part in them. Such a behavior will hardly help Kiev to move forward with the Association Agreement with the EU, Clinton and Ashton warned.
Meanwhile, the first national TV channel aired a video footage taken by a candid camera in the "Last Warning" programme. It showed the leader of the "Svaboda" Party Oleg Tyagnybok and MP Sergei Vlasenko allegedly holding talks with the US State Department officials on buying votes. This concerns from one to five million dollars. This should not surprise anybody because such videos are part of the sleaze war, a common thing in the Ukrainian election campaign, says political strategist Yaroslav Makitra.
The election campaign has entered its final stage, and the entire week will be consisted of mud-slinging and the sleaze war. Earlier, the central media outlets and websites released information that is not in line with the rules of waging an election campaign. With the electing day approaching, tension will be heightened and the mud-slinging will be increased, Yaroslav Makitra said.
Although, from the EU's point of view the Ukrainian test of democracy is under threat, Brussels will intensify its policy towards Kiev.
According to Western experts, an active support of the civil society could become one of the main aspects of Brussels's policy towards Kiev after the election. However, only several politicians from the Greens Party are demanding a visa-free regime with Kiev. So far, the idea has not received much support.
