Rudolph Giuliani, former Mayor New York City, called a news conference this morning in Times Square to appear beside Vitali Klitschko, a former boxing and kickboxing champion who is running for Mayor of Kiev, the capital of Ukraine.
Rudolph Giuliani’s firm “Giuliani Partners” announced that it is advising on Vitali Klitschko’s campaign during forthcoming elections to be held on May 25th. According to Mr. Giuliani, Vitali Klitschko’s campaign had approached his company seeking advice on policies to combat corruption in Kiev. Mr. Klitschko said he hoped to make Kiev a modern city “like Paris, like London, like New York.”
Mr. Giuliani confirmed that his staff members would be traveling to Kiev for three days next week and would produce a report about what lessons in anticorruption Kiev can draw from the experience of other cities, including New York. According to Mr. Giuliani, he will take part himself in offering Vitali his expertise.
“They need a leader like you, who can deal with corruption, who can deal with reform of government, which is so necessary. Nasdaq is part of what I was talking about with you earlier: the rejuvenation of Times Square,” Mr. Giuliani told Vitali Klitschko.
“Reforms are possible if you have the right candidate and the right set of ideas. Kiev can accomplish this. It needs a leader who is determined to do it and a leader who has shown success in so many other areas” – said Giuliani about the forthcoming elections.
Vitali is running against the current mayor of Kiev, Oleksandr Omelchenko. In March 2006, after announcing his retirement from boxing, Mr. Klitschko campaigned for mayor of Kiev on an anticorruption platform. That year he finished second to Leonid Chernovetsky, winning about 25 percent of the vote.