Mayor leads election campaign

The likelihood of Mayor Leonid Chernovetskiy's re-election improved significantly when Yushchenko blocked legislation creating a run-off.

The likelihood of Mayor Leonid Chernovetskiy’s re-election improved significantly, observers said, after Ukrainian  President Viktor Yushchenko thwarted the hopes of top mayoral contenders to pass legislation creating a second round run­off election.

Led by Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and her eponymous bloc, parliament was preparing to pass a bill creating a second round run­off out of concern that Chernovetskiy is likely to win the May 25 pre­term election, which awards the candidate with the most votes regardless of whether a majority is achieved.

However Yushchenko stated on April 14 that he’s against the proposal, indicating he would veto such an attempt and that a handful of deputies from the pro­presidential Our Ukraine­People’s Self­Defense parliamentary faction would not support it.

“The country needs stability and calm, and not PR moves or election technologies,” Yushchenko said.

The parliament voted March 18 to hold pre­term elections for the Kyiv City Council and mayoral seat in what is widely viewed as a drive by Tymoshenko to unseat Chernovetskiy as Kyiv’s mayor and gain control of the Kyiv city government.

The unexpected elections have attracted a throng of contenders, with more than 140 candidates applying to register.

As a result, experts said the opposition electorate is spread thinly among half a dozen top contenders to Chernovetskiy’s seat, including boxing champion Vitali Klitschko, Tymoshenko’s righthand man Oleksandr Turchynov and former mayor Oleksandr Omelchenko.

With so many contenders, election polls indicate Chernovetskiy has the best chance of winning.

More than 25 percent of Kyiv voters support Chernovetskiy, about 21 percent would vote for Klitschko, about 11 percent support Omelchenko and only 4 percent support Turchynov, according to the results of an election poll released April 14 by the Kyiv­based Ukrainian Sociology Service, which conducted its research between March 22 and 27.

Sociologist Iryna Bekeshkina, among the poll’s organizers, declined to reveal its financial sponsor.

The next day, a poll was released with sharply different results.

More than 17 percent of Kyiv voters support Klitshcko, 17 percent would vote for Turchynov and 16 percent support Chernovetskiy, according to a poll of 2,006 voters conducted between March 22 and 26 by the Monitoring Service civic organization.

News reports didn’t indicate how the poll was financed.

Though widely unpopular in Kyiv, Chernovetskiy draws strong support from pensioners, city workers who gained perks and higher wages and evangelical Christians, said Yuriy Syrotiuk, a Kyiv political insider.

Yushchenko’s opposition to a second round run­off is motivated by his fierce rivalry with Tymoshenko and his aim of preventing her influence from extending into the Kyiv city government, political observers said.

While the Tymoshenko Bloc is the most popular political force in Kyiv, and is likely to gain the most votes in the City Council election, Turchynov is a newcomer to Kyiv politics who is unlikely to defeat Chernovetskiy, said Sergiy Taran, director of the International Institute of Democracy in Kyiv.