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November 1, 2009 (LPAC) — Ukrainian economist Natalia Vitrenko has announced her candidacy for President of Ukraine. The banner above the podium during the Oct. 31 special Congress of the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, which nominated Vitrenko, pictured her speaking recently against the backdrop of her 2000 Presidential campaign poster, in which doctor of economics Vitrenko points to Lyndon LaRouche's Triple Curve pedagogical graphic, contrasting the collapse of the physical economy to hyperbolic financial asset and monetary growth.

Going into the 2000 election, Vitrenko was polling 32 percent support, when her campaign was derailed by an Oct. 2, 1999 terror bombing attack, which remains an "unsolved crime" to this day.

In 1995, at a conference of the Schiller Institute in Germany, she authored the Memorandum to Mankind, calling to overturn the murderous liberal economics of the International Monetary Fund. In 1997, Vitrenko and Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche co-initiated the call for a New Bretton Woods conference, which has subsequently been signed by thousands of elected officials and other influentials.

On October 18-19 of this year, Vitrenko keynoted a seminar, held in Germany with Lyndon LaRouche and Helga Zepp-LaRouche. Her presentation on the devastation of Ukraine's economy, especially since the so-called Orange Revolution of 2004, will be published in EIR of November 6, 2009, while appearing in video form on the LaRouche Political Action Committee (LPAC) website www.larouchepac.com. Based on discussions at this seminar, Helga Zepp-LaRouche and Natalia Vitrenko have drafted a new appeal, "Implement the LaRouche Plan!", which will be issued in final form at the beginning of November.

Addressing today's congress of her party, Vitrenko pledged to take Ukraine out of the International Monetary Fund, if she is elected. Calling for close alliance with Russia and Belarus, she announced her electoral platform as centered on "radical change in domestic and foreign policy, as required to save the nation." She said that it will only be possible to save Ukraine, by rejecting the economic model, imposed by the International Monetary Fund since Ukraine joined that organization in 1992.

The lead paragraph of Vitrenko's platform, released today on her website simultaneously with the PSPU congress, says: "The world financial crisis, which broke out in the autumn of 2008, was the lawful result of the total collapse of the liberal capitalist economic model and the dollar pyramid. The IMF has imposed this model on all countries of the world, which sought its loans. Driving financial speculation to insane heights, while sucking physical production dry, and flooding the world economy with dollar that are backed up by nothing, inevitably led the world economy to a crisis, and Ukraine into catastrophe."

As an economist, Vitrenko says in her program, "I assert that not a single Presidential platform will be implemented, the crisis in Ukraine will not be overcome, and our social problems will not be solved, until Ukraine leaves the IMF and the World Trade Organization, changes its economic model, and integrates its economy with that of Russia." The program outlines commitments to the development of science and education, energy, including nuclear power, agriculture and machine-building, as well as social support and promotion of family formation.

On the eve of the PSPU congres, Ukraine's Parliament finally passed an increase in the minimum wage and social security guarantees for the population. Natalia Vitrenko pointed out in her Oct. 18 seminar presentation, that this hotly debated measure means a whopping increase of $20 in the monthly income of Ukraine's poor — from $75/month to $95/month, or from $95/month ot $115/month. This pitiful measure was hotly opposed by IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who said he was "worried" by it. The IMF has hinted that it might scrap the fourth tranche of its $16.4 billion loan to Ukraine, negotiated last year.