Yushchenko: Ukraine's parliamentary election a choice between past and future

President Viktor Yushchenko declared Friday that Sunday's parliamentary election is a choice between the past and the future.

Photo: Yushchenko: Ukraine's parliamentary election a choice between past and future

"Today society faces a very simple choice: it is a choice between the past and the future," Yushchenko told the nation in a televised address two days ahead of a the key election.

"It is a pity that those who yesterday were rigging the election and humiliating citizens, today are calling for revenge. But I believe in the wisdom of Ukrainian people", reports AP.

According to International Herald Tribune , Ukraine's voters go to the polls on Sunday to elect a new Parliament. With Viktor Yushchenko's erstwhile rival for the presidency, Viktor Yanukovich, leading in the campaign, and his party looking to become the largest in the new Parliament, some Western commentators are already predicting a defeat for the "Orange Revolution."

But this misses the point. The Orange Revolution of 2004 was not a movement to get a particular party or individual into power in Ukraine. It was a popular movement that brought together people of different political persuasions united by one powerful idea - to end lies and falsification and to defend the freedom to choose their leaders.

The Ukrainian people chose a new direction that winter, one that took them toward a genuine European democracy. In that objective they have been and will be successful, whoever wins these elections.

We often forget that making such radical changes and reforms takes time. A new democratic system does not appea.

Pro-Russian opposition leader Viktor Yanukovych today accused Ukraine’s president of deceiving the nation to seize power during the 2004 Orange Revolution mass demonstrations.

"That was a fraud intended to seize power and look what they did with it," Yanukovych said at a rally of supporters in downtown Kiev. "They kept creating crises which Ukrainian people struggled to overcome."

Yanukovych’s Party of the Regions is poised to beat out President Viktor Yushchenko’s party and get the most votes in Sunday’s parliamentary elections, informs Ireland Online.

O.Ch.