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Ukraine's main parties claim victory ahead of poll
By Elizabeth Piper
KIEV, March 29 (Reuters) - Ukraine's pro-president and opposition reformist parties said on Friday a weekend election was a foregone conclusion, both confident of winning after a bitterly contested campaign.
The parliamentary poll, closely watched by the West for signs Ukraine has shed its Soviet past and is ready to implement reforms, has become a battle between the reformist ex-prime minister and the head of President Leonid Kuchma's conservative administration.
The success of For United Ukraine, the main pro-president party, will also be key for the future of Kuchma, Ukraine's longest post-independence leader.
Volodymyr Lytvyn, head of For United Ukraine, said his party was all but guaranteed a majority after 14 parties had signed up in support of his movement.
"Of course a 100-percent guarantee can only be given by insurance companies only in the case of death. But objectively...our bloc will form the majority in the parliament," he told reporters.
He said his party would cement the rule of law, implement pension reform and a law to give opposition parties rights when in power, adding that the country had to become stable.
For United Ukraine has run third in opinion polls ahead of the election, while reformist leader Viktor Yushchenko and his party, Our Ukraine, was in top position. The Communists are second.
FEARS OF FUDGED ELECTION
Yushchenko, a former prime minister and the country's most trusted politician, said he would shrug off the challenge by pro-Kuchma forces, but warned the vote could be fudged.
"We will defeat the Communists. Now the main battle is between the forces who support reforms and movement forward, and those who want to maintain the current situation," he told a rally of some 500 people on the last day of campaigning.
"We will create a transparent market-oriented economy with clear rules and speed up reforms."
Yushchenko, who headed the government from December 1999 until he was ousted in April 2001, pulled Ukraine's economy out of a decade-long recession by pushing through long-delayed reforms. He also paid off billions of hryvnias, the currency, in wage arrears.
He has joined a chorus of criticism over media violations ahead of the poll.
Western observers have said campaigning was marred by unfair media access and the growing influence of pro-president parties on local electoral commissions which count the ballot.
Kuchma said on state television he was doing his utmost to make the poll equitable: "The authorities will do their best to ensure a fair, transparent and democratic election and ensure nothing will prevent Ukrainians from expressing their will freely."
Mykhailo Ryabets, head of the Central Electoral Commission, also dismissed accusations of impending vote-rigging.
"Today, the fate of the elections is in the hands of those who take part," he told reporters.
"Who is going to falsify the election if parties and blocs form the electoral commission and count the votes?."
(Additional reporting by Olena Horodetska)
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