KIEV, November 10 (RIA Novosti) – Ukrainian doctors who conducted a regular medical examination of jailed former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko asked her to stop a hunger-strike, the country’s penitentiary service said on Saturday.
Tymoshenko, who has been undergoing treatment in a Kharkov clinic since May, declared a hunger strike on October 29 in protest at what she called vote-rigging in the parliamentary election.
Tymoshenko, whose seven year sentence over a 2009 gas deal with Russia was viewed by critics as politically motivated, condemned the recent elections as being the most dishonest in the country’s history.
Ukraine’s ruling Party of Regions gained 30 percent of the vote in the October 28 parliamentary elections. Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party came second with 25.54 percent, and world famous boxer Vitali Klitschko’s Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform (UDAR) got 13.96 percent. They were followed by the Communist Party with 13.18 percent, and the nationalist Svoboda (Freedom) Party with 10.44 percent.
International election observers criticized what they called the abuse of administrative resources, a lack of media freedom during the campaign season, and the opaque campaign finances of the Party of Regions and pro-government “independent” candidates.
