Yatseniuk, Yushchenko and Hrytsenko are all competing against each other. This is a well known flaw in the first-past-the-post voting system. a system that is undemocratic and outdated.

The good news is that this leaves Tymoshenko and Yanukovych to fight it out in a second round of voting. The bad news is it costs over 100 million dollars per round. and even mopre if you take into account the ocsts of campaigning.

The while notion of a directly elected presidential system is wrong. At best Ukraine will get a president that represents a slim majority.

Ukraine should take a closer look at Canada and other European States and adopt a Parliamentary system of governance.

If they must have direct election of their head of state then they should adopt a single round preferential ballot.

Especially when you have a government like Ukraine’, which is a cancer, a yoke on the Ukrainian nation, run by oligarchs for their own personal benefit.

Prohibiting free speech does not make the stench, the rot of Ukrainian government go away.

http://www.rferl.org/content/Former_Czech_Foreign_Minister_Talks_About_Missile_Defense_Belarus_And_Russia/1836572.html

Eastern Security

RFE/RL: A question from our Ukrainian Service: Ukrainian intellectuals and politicians, including ex-President Leonid Kravchuk, warn the West of a rising Russian threat. They call on Western leaders to hold an international conference to provide guarantees for Ukrainian security. Do you support this proposal?

Schwarzenberg: I don’t know, somebody would have to explain to me how a conference could provide security guarantees for Ukraine.

I do think…that the greatest danger for Ukrainian security is the fact that the political will of the nation is so split. If the political parties in the Ukraine would be more cooperating, more capable of making a compromise — an arrangement — and if Ukraine could present itself as a united country, behind the government, the president, the leadership of the country, then of course I think the greatest danger for Ukraine would be to belong to the past.

We can support Ukraine, but we — [and] first of all, the Ukrainians themselves — must solve this problem. Nobody who is not able to manage his own country can expect that anybody else will do the work for him. And of course if there were a united Ukraine which developed a healthy political life, then I do think it would get much more support and I do think anybody who would be interested in treating the country or having decisive influence on the country would have much more difficult job to tackle.

But you can’t have them between themselves. If [there is an] enemy of the country, the job is much easier. But as we know, that was already the problem of Ukraine in the past centuries: necessary unity.

RFE/RL: So the first job must be done by the Ukrainians. But is there something specific that Europe — or, more specifically, the Czech Republic — can do to encourage Ukraine?

Schwarzenberg: We can, of course, help them in many questions of the development of the Ukraine — technical, scientific, economic — there’s a lot that can be done by Ukraine. We can, of course, [do] much less…. Then, of course, you can get the diplomatic help too…. But, first of all, we must know what is the point of view of Ukraine.