The Central Election Commission has already announced the lists of single member candidates in the constituencies of Cherkasy. However, even an average voter has a number of questions regarding the nomination of the candidates, their positions, and party dependence. In particular, each district has few secrets; in order to reveal which even Conan Doyle would have need to write few hundred pages of Sherlock Holmes.

Thus, let's start with the "lickerish" constituency #194 that includes the major part of Cherkasy. While reading the list of candidates, one involuntary pays attention to three personalities: Serhii Otreshko, Viktor Paramonov, and Valentyna Zhukovska. The thing that unites them is their connection to the party of Regions. Thus, Serhii Otreshko is one of the most active party members in Cherkasy city, without any exaggerations. Up till recently, he was the Head of city organization of the Party of Regions, he is the Head of faction of the Party of Regions in the city council. And under its authority he was conducting his political and social activity, and was always present in the city's information space. Probably, just a few do not know him. The majority remembers his social projects and extremely productive activity. However, in the constituency he is an independent candidate, because the party is represented by Viktor Paramonov, the Chief Physician of the Oblast Cancer Detection Center. Obviously, in terms of political popularity Serhii Otreshko is ahead of him. However, lately the same level of popularity has an independent candidate Valentyna Zhukovska. It is worth mentioning that she is not the member of the Party of Regions but has different and not weaker connections with its team.

Thus, Valentyna Zhukovska is the Chairman of the Management Board of Nadra Bank, and up to April 2012 she was not familiar to the citizens of Cherkasy. She entered the city via the biggest Cherkasy enterprise - opened joint-stock company Azot. On April 27 Mrs Zhukovska was elected as an honorable President of this plant, and since July 1 she coordinates the cooperation of financial and industrial sectors of Group DF. The thing is that the biggest shareholder of Nadra Bank is an Austrian company Centragas Holding AG, affiliated with Group DF, which is a private international holding company of the Ukrainian businessmen Dmytro Firtash. Moreover, Dmytro Firtash is the owner of open joint-stock company Azot.

Voloymyr Mamalyha, a candidate from Our Ukraine party, also amazes because not so long ago, during the live shows, he was continuously talking about his dissatisfaction with the Orange government and the governance of Viktor Yushchenko. Why does he, who was constantly railing at this team yesterday, follows it today? In order to answer this question, we should recall, for example, an article of Volodymyr Mamalyha, published in a leading online resource "Procherk",  in which he said that "If the orange or white-hearted authorities were earning money, while trying to preserve the illusion of democracy..." Due to this quote the answer becomes clear.

The duplication of candidates was also noticed in other districts: in #195 and #198 from the Party of Regions, and in # 198 from the Communist Party of Ukraine. The candidates from the Fatherland in the voting districts # 196 and # 200 will also run for elections in pairs. Thus, in the voting district #196 (with center in Korsun-Shevchenkivskyi city) the party has nominated Oleksandr Sinhaievskyi, and an independent candidate will be his party mate Iryna Alieksieieva. Another two candidates with the same surnames also seem interesting. They are Serhii Blazhevych, President of a successful firm from the party of Natalia Korolevska, and Oleksandr Blazhevych - an ordinary security guard from Kharkiv. Interesting, how long did it take them to find a person with the same surname? Moreover, among the competitors of Serhii Blazhevych there is his party mate Alla Yarema, who takes part in the elections as an independent candidate.

Homonyms are in the voting district #198 (with center in Zhashkiv city): Anatolii Nechyporenko and Valentyn Nechyporenko. The latter is a strong competitor for everyone, because, unlike everyone else, he conducts an active campaign in his district for quite a long time. He uses all methods (which were covered earlier) and that is why the appearance of his homonym from Kyiv is not a surprise. Also, it is worth mentioning, that Valentyn Nechyporenko is an independent candidate, although in winter the experts from Cherkasy were claiming that during the elections the current government will count on him. Except of this, Valentyn Nychyporenko is the owner of Zhashkiv horse-racing complex, where horse-racings under the support of the Party of Regions and official meetings with the President took place, etc.

Thus, in 7 constituencies of Cherkasy region we have 114 candidates, among whom there are 10 from the All-Ukrainian Union Fatherland and 10 candidates from the Party of Regions (including few unofficial ones).

After getting acquainted with all candidates, emerges a following question: "Why do the recently active candidates from the Party of Regions become the independent candidates and unfamiliar ones are nominated instead of them?" and "Why does the same party nominate two-three candidates in the same district?" We can presume that the first ones believe more in the strength of their name than in the party's popularity, and the others do not believe in any of them and go into extremes using the whole range of means.

Maryna Makukha
Press Secretary
 
For comment, please contact:
Serhii Varych
Election Programs Coordinator of the Civil Network OPORA
in Cherkasy oblast
063 62 86 780

Reference:

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