THREE MORE CANDIDATES REGISTERED... The Central Election Commission on 19 February registered another three candidates for 26 March presidential elections: State Duma deputy (Fatherland-All Russia) and film-maker Stanislav Govorukhin, Yabloko leader Grigorii Yavlinskii, and Movement for Civil Dignity head Ella Pamfilova. As of 19 February, eight candidates were registered for the presidential elections. According to the Commission, Yavlinskii earned 2,480,848 rubles ($86,320) in 1998-1999 and he has 899,642 rubles on deposit in Austria's Creditanstalt bank. His wife, Yelena, has 32,233 rubles on an account in the same bank. He owns apartments in Moscow and Lvov, Ukraine, as well as a dacha outside Moscow. JAC

UKRAINE'S TKACHENKO SAYS PARLIAMENTARY MAJORITY HAS 'SPLIT.' Former leftist speaker Oleksandr Tkachenko told Interfax on 18 February that the center-right parliamentary majority is now suffering from "a split and misunderstanding." Tkachenko added that last week the majority approved only six bills of the 44 on the agenda and failed to agree on personnel issues. "The majority has no such enthusiasm as in the beginning. They have felt that they were fooled," Tkachenko added. Deputy Speaker Stepan Havrysh denied that the majority is facing a crisis. Havrysh said the majority's inability to appoint parliamentary committee deputy heads last week was caused by a lack not of agreement but of time. JM

UKRAINE'S 2000 BUDGET SPARKS CRITICISM. Andriy Derkach, a member of the parliament's Budgetary Committee, told Interfax on 18 February that Ukraine will "soon" see that the Economy Ministry made "miscalculations" in the 2000 zero-deficit budget, which was approved by the parliament last week. Derkach also criticized the stance of some lawmakers during the voting on the budget, adding that "it is the government that invented this budget so let the government implement it, while we will only approve it." Meanwhile, Leonid Davydov, a coal mining trade union activist, warned that miners may launch spontaneous protests over insufficient funding for the coal mining sector. The 2000 budget provides for some 1.5 billion hryvni ($268 million) in subsidies to the sector, while trade unions demanded twice that amount. JM