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Presidential candidate expelled from Party of Regions

“All my party mates will be expelled shortly, this is the betrayal of the interests of the party and the country,” the candidate for Ukraine’s presidency Sergei Tigipko says

Sergei Tigipko ITAR-TASS/Vladimir Sindeev

Sergei Tigipko

© ITAR-TASS/Vladimir Sindeev

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Congresses of Ukrainian parties to name presidential candidates

KIEV, April 07. /ITAR-TASS/. Parliamentarian and a candidate for Ukraine’s presidency Sergei Tigipko has been expelled from the Party of Regions after being registered as an independent candidate.

“Mass expulsions of those who tried to openly support my candidacy have started in the party,” Tigipko said, adding that he himself had been also expelled.

“All my party mates will be expelled shortly, this is the betrayal of the interests of the party and the country,” he said. At the moment the Party of Regions has become “a subsidiary of a certain financial-industrial group, a private enterprise,” he said without elaborating.

“All decisions are made individually. Repressions inside the party have been launched against those who disagree,” Tigipko continued. “A real fight against dissidence is in progress. Cleansings are carried out instead of renovation and democratization that the voters expect from us,” he said, adding that Ukraine needed “a powerful party, representing the interests of residents of its [large Russian speaking] south-east”.

Tigipko was earlier registered as an independent candidate for Ukrainian president. This was not supported in his Party of Regions, which nominated Mikhail Dobkin.

In the previous presidential election, Tigipko came third after Viktor Yanukovych,the leader of the Party of Regions, and Yulia Tymoshenko.

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