7 Aug.: New paragraph (the penultimate one).

Ukraine’s early election is 30 September. The various parties and blocs are getting their lists and programs in order.

The Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko (BYUT):

Timoshenko, First Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Alexander Turchinov, parliament deputy Nikolai Tomenko, Joseph Vinsky who has swapped from the Socialist Party faction, former finance minister Viktor Pinzenyk and former army commander Nikolai Petruk are amongst the top ten candidates of the bloc.

Timoshenko said she would not agree to forming a coalition with the Party of Regions even if the premiership is at stake.

Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions intends to use the campaign:

in order to show people the differences between the populist activity of the two previous governments and the effective work of the present government led by Viktor Yanukovich.

Yanukovich will lead the list of candidates from the Party of Regions. The “five” also includes chairwoman of the Party of Regions faction Raisa Bogatyreva, people’s deputy Taras Chornovil, Justice Deputy Minister Inna Bogoslovskaya and Emergencies Minister Nestor Shofrich. [I am not sure what the reference to "the five" is. Maybe the (closed-list) ballot shows only the top 5 candidates out of the (up to) 450?--MSS]

President Viktor Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine -People’s Self Defence is, according to its leader, Yuriy Lutsenko:

not a political force of ‘separate leaders’, but is the ‘party of a team’. He also assured that the Bloc has no enemies among other political forces, but its opponent is the Party of Regions and ‘its satellites, which profess the colonial policy and colonial perspectives for Ukraine’.

Lutsenko reminded, that the power creating mechanism is clearly set out in the agreement between the Our Ukraine and the BYUT . “The political force, which will receive the majority of votes on election, will delegate its candidate to the Prime Minister post, other posts will be distributed in equal proportions”, he noted.

I would imagine that what Lutsenko is referring to is an agreement that BYUT and Our Ukraine will form a government together if the electoral outcome gives them a majority of seats, and that the ranking of the two parties’ votes will determine which one heads the cabinet.

The previous entry in the “Ukraine” block has some notes about the lists submitted for the previously planned, then postponed, election this past May, and compares to the 2006 election. (Entries on the 2006 election will be farther down the page, or on a previous page, if you click “Ukraine” at the top of this one.)