Hrytsenko not planning to support Yuschenko in presidential election

18:40

Presidential candidate Anatoliy Hrytsenko has said that he is not planning to withdraw his candidacy to support another candidate, including incumbent President Viktor Yuschenko.

"My position is unchanged... If I saw anybody whom I could have supported, I would have done this from the very beginning, and I wouldn't have run for president [myself]. But I currently see no person who could work more effectively and more morally from the first day as head of state. Yuschenko is not among such people," the politician's press service quoted Hrytsenko as saying on Thursday.

Hrytsenko also said that he could not support Yuschenko for various reasons, in particular, due to the latter's battle against corruption and bribe-taking. He said that the president had vetoed a bill on combating corruption that was twice supported by over 350 MPs.

He also commented on a statement by Viktor Baloha, the United Center Party leader and ex-head of the Presidential Secretariat, who called on Hrytsenko and other presidential candidates Yuriy Kostenko and Arseniy Yatseniuk to support Yuschenko in the first round of voting to prevent authoritarianism taking hold in the country.

"If Baloha believes that Viktor Yuschenko is a man for the sake of whom other candidates should withdraw their candidacies and unite, he, first of all, should fall at the feet of Viktor Andriyovych [Yuschenko] and his wife and apologize for the fact that following his dismissal as head of the Presidential Secretariat, he spoke about Yuschenko's business interests and about the absence of systemic work," Hrytsenko said.

He advised Baloha to spend all of his funds to support Yuschenko and called on the United Center and everybody who respects him to back the incumbent president, and say openly with whom he connects authoritarianism - with Yuschenko or Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.