"Election to be rigged" says the expert.

This is what passes for brains in the Yanukovych faction:

Leader of the Party of Regions of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych has accused the
authorities of preparing massive falsifications in the upcoming parliamentary elections in all Ukrainian regions.

"The authorities have developed a scheme for massive falsifications of the elections in all regions of Ukraine, without exceptions. The Orange team needs massive falsifications to remain in power and start wholesale privatization of impoverished Ukraine right after the elections," Yanukovych said at the 9th congress of the Party of Regions in Kyiv on Saturday. (Interfax and I don't have a link to it yet.)

That's the way you do it. Discredit an election that it looks like you'll do well in. That will lay the groundwork for, what?, a court challenge of the election in which you do well?

They used to joke in my neck of the Texas woods (OK, hill country with mesquite trees and cactus) about Texas A&M. The joke goes, "Texas was playing A&M when the gun went off for the half. Ten plays later, A&M scored a touchdown."

Really, if it weren't for the no-show Our Ukraine et al, this wouldn't be much of an election contest. Alas, the facts on the ground are what they are.

UPDATE: The Moscow Times reported this.

LEvko comments: There's quite an amusingly written report on last Saturday's PR 9th Congress in Kyiv at http://www.pravda.com.ua/ru/news/2006/3/6/38421.htm As you say Scott, it requires a special kind of moron to cast doubt on the legitimacy of an election he will most likely win. There again, if the upper echelons of your party are loaded with guys like former head of the Central Election Commision Kivalov, who attempted to fix the the 2004 Presidential Elections...it's probably the only tune he knows. The main theme of the congress was indeed to accuse the authorities of planning mass falsifications.

The article congratulates Yanukovych's spin doctors for teaching him the words to the Ukrainian national anthem. Its authors note that sang the words, 'our enemies will die like dew in the sun, we will rule brothers, in our own land,' with particular gusto. His speech was, for Ukrainian politicians, an unbelievably short 14 minutes; and his idiot-proof script, which the authors photographed, contained every single word he uttered, including, 'Thank you, Ivan Vasylovych..'

At least the spin doctors included quite a good joke from the days of Brezhnev for Kushnaryov, Yanukovych's campaign chief: "If you want to feel sated, switch on the refrigerator, and switch on the radio when President 'clean-hand's is speaking."

More sinister was Andrey Kluyev, who was overheard saying to a fellow delegate: 'There is no third alternative: Either we [do] them [in], or they [do] us [in].'