Yanukovych: Another “former” Communist party member who “wins” a landslide victory. Read the following and then take a look at the original post above...guess which country was the first to recognize Yanukovych’s victory?
Excerpts from the Jamestown Foundation’s expose on Yanukovych entitled “YANUKOVYCH TRIES TO CLEAN UP HIS IMAGE”:
...Yanukovych was sentenced to three years imprisonment, from 1967 to1970, for theft. But he was released early. He was again imprisoned from 1970 to 1972 for violence. In 1978, the Donetsk oblast court annulled both convictions. Hanna Herman, Yanukovych's new press spokeswoman, complained that, "Someone is very eager to discredit the leading aspirant to the top post in our state" (Ukrayinska Pravda, May 13). President Kuchma added that it is, "a bit laughable when this factor is used" (Ukrayinska Pravda, April 28). A Cabinet of Ministers press release, dated May 13, also linked the public airing of Yanukovych's prison terms to the election campaign...
...Not surprisingly, the opposition has raised the issue. Our Ukraine Deputy Mykola Tomenko posed a question in Parliament to Interior Minister Mykola Bilokin, in which he asked for details relating to both convictions. Answering the question has proven difficult for Bilokin, as the original documents in Donetsk oblast courts pertaining to Yanukovych between 1960 and 1970 have disappeared. A similar cleansing of official documents pertaining to the past of Viktor Medvedchuk, head of the presidential administration, took place after the publication in 2001 of an unflattering biography entitled Narcissist by Our Ukraine Deputy Dmytro Chobit...
...Oleksandr Kondratyev, chairman of the Donetsk appeals court, attempted to clear up Yanukovych's criminal background at a news conference during which he outlined the convictions. Kondrateyev explained how former cosmonaut and USSR Supreme Soviet Deputy Georgiy Beregoviy interceded on Yanukovych's behalf to help overturn both convictions (Interfax-Ukraine, May 26). After the press conference, Donetsk media publicised a claim that the 1978 overturning of the two convictions was legitimate as Yanukovych had been charged on "false testimony" (Ukrayina TV, May 26). It was offered as further proof of his innocence that Yanukovych was permitted to join the Communist Party in 1970...
...In 1973, Medvedchuk was also sentenced to two years imprisonment for violence. But he, like Yanukovych, did not serve his full sentence. Quashing of Medvedchuk's conviction may have been based on an illicitly taped conversion by presidential guard Mykola Melnychenko. On the recording, Kuchma is told by then-Chairman of the Security Service Leonid Derkach that Medvedchuk and his long-time oligarch ally, Grygoriy Surkis, had been KGB agents (New York Times, December 19, 2003)....
Link:
http://www.jamestown.org/publications_details.php?volume_id=401&issue_id=2970&article_id=236789Here's part of a letter from a friend in Kyiv, from November 17th:
...nas seychas predvybornaya bol'ba nakalen. Narod neehlektrizovan, t.k. vlast' vybory sfabrikovala, postaviv server v administratsii prezidenta i ottuda upravlyala TsVK. Predstavlyaesh'? Strana skazochnykh geroev. "...the pre-election fight has heated up. The people are not electrified, since the government has fabricated the elections, after placing the server in the president's administration and from there they govern the TsVK (??). Can you imagine? A nation of fairytale heroes."
I'm not sure what it means, but I think TsVK may be the central election commission (or committee).