No matter what the polls and neighbors say, Ukrainians should vote for the presidential candidate best able to lead the nation.

Conscience vote

When you go to the supermarket for a bottle of water, do you end up buying detergent just because the person next to you in the line has done the same? What a silly question, you might think.

But many Ukrainians are planning to do just that in the upcoming presidential elections. Despite the fact that the Central Election Committee has registered 18 candidates to run for the country’s top job, many people feel their alternative is basically down to the two front-runners, Party of Regions leader Victor Yanukovych and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

They come out in the top two spots in every poll taken. Both camps are actively encouraging the idea that this is now a “two-horse” race – even though the official campaign for the Jan. 17 election is barely a month old. However, Yanukovych and Tymoshenko have high negative ratings as well.

The fact that Yanukovych, the villain of the 2004 Orange Revolution, stands a chance of getting elected president is an indictment of Ukraine’s corroded political system. His role in the 2004 presidential election, rigged on his behalf but undone by a peaceful and popular uprising, has never been properly investigated. His criminal background gives great pause. Ukraine will likely go only further down the road of lawlessness and corruption if he were elected to the top job.

Tymoshenko would bring her own heavy baggage to the presidency. She’s never been brought to account for how she acquired her mysterious and evidently vast, but undeclared and hidden wealth. The nation should never forget how she almost brought parts of the nation to its economic knees when, as a protege of the convicted swindler ex-Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, she charged extortionist prices for imported natural gas from Russia.

Ukrainians truly sick of the current elite should be actively vetting the other 16 presidential candidates and demanding frequent public debates. The consequences of choosing the wrong president for 46 million people can be disastrous or, as the last five years have shown under President Victor Yushchenko, deeply disappointing and disenchanting.

Life will not improve unless voters demand change. All of the current political sharks were small and insignificant in the past. President Victor Yushchenko was once an obscure village accountant. Tymoshenko is remembered by many as a bad-mannered, giggly provincial lady wearing a leather skirt at her first press conference in Kyiv. Yanukovych spent time in prison.

People’s trust – too frequently betrayed -- propelled this troika to the political heights they currently occupy. But if voters think that former Defense Minister Anatoliy Hrytsenko, former Deputy Prime Minister Sergiy Tigipko or another in the presidential field is a better fit in the leadership role, they should win.

However, in the past, Ukrainians have been reluctant to “waste” their votes on candidates or parties given little chance of winning by polls and pundits. Voters should ignore these polls and pundits and cast their ballots for their – and the nation’s – best interests.

Voting your conscience is the way to be true to head and heart. If enough people do the same, eventually effective and honest leaders will emerge with fresh new approaches to solving the nation’s long list of problems. So, no matter what everyone else – including your neighbor – says, vote your conscience.