Oleksandr Moroz, a veteran Ukrainian politician and two-time speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, has withdrawn his candidacy for President of Ukraine.
Moroz announced the decision on Facebook on March 27, just three days before the election. The 74-year-old politician formerly led the Socialist Party of Ukraine, but was running in the 2019 election as a candidate from the Socialist Party of Oleksandr Moroz.
“The political council of the party that advanced my candidacy for president of Ukraine… analyzed the course of the election campaign and came to the justified conclusion that an unprecedented and unceremonious election falsification campaign was being prepared,” the politician wrote.
Moroz characterized the election as a “pseudo-democratic cover” for the battles between oligarchs for their own personal interests.
“The active core of the party considers it inappropriate (for me) to continue my participation in the campaign, the political farce…” Moroz added.
Moroz entered politics in 1990 as a member of the Verkhovna Rada from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. After independence, he took the helm of the Socialist Party of Ukraine, which increasingly grew into a center-left party.
His more moderate stance led hardliners, like orthodox Marxist Natalia Vitrenko, to leave the party. Vitrenko would go on to form the radical, pro-Russian Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine in 1996.
Moroz would twice serve as speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, in 1994-1996 and 2006-2007. He would also run for president four times. The 2019 election would have been his fifth presidential campaign.
Throughout the 1990s, Moroz became a staunch enemy of Ukraine’s second and longest serving president, Leonid Kuchma. In 2000, he played a pivotal role in the so-called “cassette scandal,” accusing Kuchma of ordering the murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze based upon recorded testimony of the president’s former bodyguard.
Later, Moroz took part in the Orange Revolution against voter fraud in the 2004 presidential election, which prevented Viktor Yanukovych from taking power and led to election of pro-European President Viktor Yushchenko.
However, in 2006, Moroz changed sides and formed a coalition with Yanukovych, which helped him become Rada speaker and led Yanukovych to become prime minister.
Moroz has been out of active politics since 2007.
However, in a March 2019 interview with the Kyiv Post, he said he was entering the presidential election because “the country is being consciously destroyed by the current authorities who are controlled from outside (Ukraine).”
