I had thought I had seen it all in the last four years since the Orange Revolution, but this has to top it. Politicians Taras Chornovil, Oleksandr Moroz, Serhiy Holovatiy and many others moved effortlessly from the Orange to the Party of Regions camp.

Trust, loyalty, honesty and integrity are simply absent in post-Soviet totalitarian Ukraine and we should take this reality into account when dealing with Ukraine. Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko deputy Viktor Ukolov entitled his blog "Prostitution Forever" http://blogs.pravda.com.ua/authors/ukolov/

Ihor Popov, head of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine - an excellent election monitoring NGO which was funded for many years by the National Democratic Institute (linked to the U.S. Democratic Party) - was appointed deputy head of the presidential secretariat yesterday (http://www.president.gov.ua/news/13260.html).

Why anybody would want to join the discredited secretariat headed by an incompetent and corrupt "crisis manager" (Victor Baloga) with only nine months to go before the elections (when Victor Yushchenko has only 2 percent support)is baffling.

Unless, that is, his election skills are to be used by the presidential secretariat to influence the upcoming vote either for Yushchenko (if he decides to stand) or for Arseniy Yatsenyuk (if Yushchenko does not stand, which will lead him to support Yatsenyuk as the best candidate to undermine Yulia Tymoshenko's support in Orange western and central Ukraine).

Popov would have known about the pending appointment when he went on record on March 18 saying that the Ternopil by-elections were held in a "free"

manner without violations. BYuT, which dropped from first place in 2007 to fifth place in these elections with 8 percent, has contested the results.

Presidential secretariat head Victor Baloga's United Center came in a surprising second with 14 percent after pre-election polls gave it a low 4 percent.

Regions came in a very surprising third with 10 percent (United Center is the only wing of Our Ukraine-People's Self Defense that supports a grand coalition).

BYuT alleges that administrative resources were used to increase the vote for United Center and Regions and to lower the vote for BYuT. Undoubtedly administrative resources were used (the Ternopil governor is a member of United Center) but, of course, BYuT also made two important strategic

mistakes: voting for the election and then voting to cancel it, and deciding to not participate in the election campaign.