Just to prove the skeptics right, the Kaniv-4 group of politicians failed to name its single candidate and are not likely to do so before the Oct. 31 vote.
Last week the group announced that two of the candidates were ready to drop out in favor of Socialist leader Oleksandr Moroz, but later one of them changed his mind.
Oleksandr Tkachenko, the parliament speaker, decided not to support Moroz after the Peasant Party, which had nominated him, forbade him on Oct. 17 to do so.
‘It should’ve been expected that they won’t nominate anyone,’ said Serhy Dovhan, leader of the Peasant party. ‘Because the Kaniv agreement was signed hastily, and had no defining principles.’
Tkachenko himself said that the party decision is not comparative, and he can continue negotiations with the other candidates, but said it was ‘hardly possible’ that he would withdraw.
Cherkasy mayor Volodymyr Oliynyk also announced he would drop out of the race together with Tkachenko, but unlike the latter, he has not changed his mind.
At the same time, the last of the Kaniv group, non-affiliated Yevhen Marchuk also decided to campaign on his own.
‘We believe that [Marchuk] is a self-sufficient politician who is able to win the election campaign on his own,’ said Anatoly Murakhovsky, his spokesman, on Oct. 14.
‘But he reserves the right to withdraw from the race in the term specified by the law,’ he said.
According to presidential election law, the deadline for official withdrawal from the race is three days before the election, or Oct. 28.
It wasn’t immediately clear when Oliynyk planned to officially drop out.
Before Tkachenko changed his mind and decided to continue campaigning, the Kaniv-4 came up with a scenario that would have Marchuk stay in the race to help Moroz get into the second round.
‘The Kaniv-4 has just transformed into the format three-plus-one,’ Murakhovsky told the press.
Moroz himself explained last week that Marchuk was staying in the race because he will ‘draw votes’ from their rival, President Leonid Kuchma
Moroz told UNIAN agency that the analysis of the situation showed that if Marchuk had dropped out in his favor, it would give Kuchma about 1 million votes in the first round.
Yevhen Marchuk is supported by several national democratic parties and leaders, and is believed to be very popular in western Ukraine. His campaigners in the west said that they see the former KGB general as a candidate with ‘a strong hand’ who is able to put his country in order.
Although all of the Kaniv-4 members say they reserve the right to withdraw by the legitimate deadline, most analysts predict that it won’t happen and that none of them will make it to the second round.
‘I envy President Kuchma for having such competitors. I wish I had the same kind of rivals in my job,’ said Vyacheslav Pikhovshek, director of the Ukrainian Center for Independent Political Research, an NGO.
Some of the candidates continue negotiations with Communist leader Petro Symonenko and hope that he will decide to withdraw his candidacy in somebody’s favor, especially if his Russian comrades continue to press him.
Symonenko was strongly encouraged by his colleagues from Ukraine and Russia to join the Kaniv-4 group, but he did not do so. He said that one member of the group, Marchuk, is supported by ultra-right nationalist parties, and the general ideology of the group is unclear.
Now that the group has virtually seized to exist, negotiations with him renewed.
Tkachenko, in particular, said that Symonenko would be happy to support him.
‘Petro Mykolayovych does not mind supporting my candidacy, but he has not announced so far that he would drop out in my favor,’ he told a press conference on Oct. 18.
Some sources said that a delegation from the Russian Communist Party came to Kyiv on Oct. 20 to try and persuade Symonenko to withdraw, but the results of their negotiations have not been reported.
‘The Russian Communists do not consider Symonenko to be a national political leader. At the same time, they do not consider Moroz to be a communist. That’s why they will try to persuade him to withdraw in Tkachenko’s favor,’ Dovhan said.
Moroz had said previously that the general session of the Communist Party, which nominated Symonenko, did not allow him to withdraw in favor of anybody.
