A key opposition party concluded its congress Sunday with a call for the dismissal of President Leonid Kuchma and top government officials, accusing them of creating an authoritarian state in Ukraine
g them of creating an authoritarian state in Ukraine.
The president “bears direct political and moral responsibility for crisis in the country and for Ukraine’s slide to authoritarianism,” the Sobor party said in a resolution that concluded its two-day congress.
Sobor, a centrist party, has joined the anti-presidential protests that have continued in Ukraine in recent weeks over allegations Kuchma and his aides were involved in the death of opposition journalist Heorhiy Gongadze. Kuchma and others deny the charges.
The protests have also been joined by those angry with Kuchma for failing to reverse Ukraine’s post-Soviet decline. The majority of the 50 million Ukrainians so far have remained passive.
Sobor also demanded the resignation of the former Soviet republic’s interior minister, prosecutor general, tax service head and the national security chief, saying they have “discredited themselves both as people and as officials.”
“The congress states that the present model of an authoritarian presidential republic in Ukraine has not justified itself,” the resolution said. “Unlimited presidential power did not bring prosperity to the people. Instead, it became a source of unlimited arbitrariness, corruption and constant social instability.”
Meanwhile, Anatoliy Chernikov, editor-in-chief of Tovarishch (Comrade), a newspaper published by the opposition Socialist Party, said unknown attackers hurled two firebombs at the paper’s offices in central Kiev early Saturday, the Interfax news agency reported.
The attack caused minor damage to windows and the building wall, the report said.
Chernikov linked the attack to the role of his party and its leader Oleksandr Moroz in the current anti-Kuchma scandal. Moroz made public some recordings that were allegedly made by a former Kuchma bodyguard and purportedly documented the president and others discussing measures to silence Gongadze.
Scattered small demonstrations were reported over the weekend in the western city of Lviv and the northeastern industrial center of Kharkiv, all with demands to free Julia Tymoshenko, an opposition leader arrested on corruption and bribery charges.
Prosecutors suspect Tymoshenko, who served as deputy premier before being ousted by Kuchma last month, of stealing and illegally exporting Russian natural gas and other offenses. Tymoshenko says the accusations were orchestrated by political foes and opponents of her reforms in the energy sector, one of the most corrupt in Ukraine.
