The parliamentary faction of the Regions Party will on Tuesday raise the question of the goals of the mass arrival of Georgian citizens in Ukraine for alleged monitoring of the presidential election in the country, Regions Party deputy head Borys Kolesnikov has said.
"Everything that was published on the internet and announced yesterday [on Friday] by three candidates [Oleksandr Moroz, Inna Bohoslovska, and Mykhailo Brodsky] regarding interference in the election process at the request of [Ukrainian Prime Minister] Yulia Tymoshenko and [Georgian President Mikheil] Saakashvili gradually finds its confirmation," he said at a press conference in Kyiv on Saturday.
He said that the faction would be obliged to raise this question at a parliament meeting on January 19.
"So we’re obliged … to invite the prosecutor general and the SBU [the Security Service of Ukraine] to establish the truth – why do a few thousand foreign citizens arrive in one [Donetsk] region just on election day?" Kolesnikov said.
He said that a respective statement would also be sent to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and other international organizations.
"If the interference of the Saakashvili regime in a struggle against the [Ukrainian] opposition is proved, we’ll demand that international organizations and the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry introduce a visa regime for Georgian citizens irrespective of the election results," Kolesnikov said.
The head of presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovych’s election headquarters, Mykola Azarov, in turn, said that the Regions Party sent a respective statement to the Ukrainian president, the prosecutor general, the parliament speaker, the SBU chief and the interior minister on Saturday.
The Regions Party could also hold a rally outside the building of the Central Election Commission (CEC) on January 18, Kolesnikov said.
"We’re planning, perhaps, a small rally on January 18 in order to protect the CEC," he said.
Regions Party MP Olena Bondarenko said earlier that a group of Georgian citizens had arrived in Donetsk and that they are planning to register as observers for the January 17 presidential election in Ukraine.
The Central Election Commission has not yet registered the proposed 2,000 observers from Georgia.
