“The country will be terribly sorry for the rupture of the orange field”

In my opinion, the rupture of the orange field is a serious mistake the country will terribly suffer. I did my best to prevent it. However, we can not believe this rupture between Viktor Yushchenko and me represents the end of our democratic revolution. We succeeded in making honesty and moral part of our political game. The parliamentarian elections in March will be the second phase of the process to get rid of the system of clan and corruption.
The new government is very similar to the old one. This proves they wanted to get me out of the game. The new Prime Minister was someone pretty close to former president Kuchma; therefore, the president is close to the old regime and has established a technical government at the time it has given the real power to those around. Therefore, I’m part of the opposition and my faction will defend our democratic ideals in the elections to be held in March. Apart from this, we’ll keep a constructive attitude with regard to topics such as joining the WTO.
Despite the attacks suffered, I’m still proud of my government’s achievements. We succeeded in increasing fiscal revenues by fighting the underground economy in Ukraine. We changed the Ukrainian rules that encouraged corruption. This is the kind of regime we wanted to develop during the re-privatization processes. All accusations regarding oligarch Kolomeiski’s alleged favouritism are false.
I hope political tensions in Ukraine do not affect the image of the orange revolution in the West. I made a private visit to Moscow and I realized nobody was happy for Ukraine’s problems. We must establish again a friendly and solid association with the Russians. I took advantage of this opportunity to show that 90% of the accusations were actually coming from campaigns orchestrated and promoted within Ukraine by my Ukrainian opponents.