On February 8, elections to the regional council will be held in the Turiisk district due to the death of deputy Sviatoslav Hryshchenko. \nThe Turiisk district election commission for the elections of deputies to the Volyn Regional Council registered 8 candidates for deputy of the regional council to participate on February 8, 2004 in the elections of a deputy of the regional council in multi-mandate electoral district No. 19 (Turiisk district). \nLocal sociologists from the Agency for Social Analysis "Socium-XXI" predicted success for 2-3 candidates, among whom were Dziamulych Ivan Vasyliovych, non-partisan, head of the department of education and science of the regional state administration, Oles Yevhen Ivanovych, non-partisan, first deputy head, head of the department of agriculture and food of the district state administration, and Shyba Bohdan Pavlovych, member of the Ukrainian People's Party, deputy director of the Agency for Regional Development "Volyn", who is also deputy head of the election headquarters of the "Our Ukraine" Bloc in the region. \nAlso in the region's political circles, the assertion was actively discussed that the main struggle would unfold between the representative of "Our Ukraine" Bohdan Shyba and the representative of the authorities Ivan Dziamulych. And given the latest events in the political life of the region, one can firmly say that such an assertion has a right to exist. \nas the head of the Volyn regional territorial election commission Petro Yastrub reported today, recently one of the real contenders for the deputy mandate — Yevhen Oles — submitted an application to withdraw his candidacy from the elections to the regional council, and the district election commission adopted a corresponding decision. \nSo, given the withdrawal of one of the real representatives of the authorities, one can conclude that the regional state administration is betting on Ivan Dziamulych and sets itself the goal of preventing Bohdan Shyba's election as a deputy by any means. Evidence of this may be the appearance in regional newspapers, co-founded by the Volyn regional state administration or its structural subdivisions, of critical publications directed at Bohdan Shyba, who for 8 years held the position of head of the Turiisk district state administration. \nas a source in the regional headquarters of "Our Ukraine" reports, in the last days before the elections, the authorities are preparing another portion of compromising material for Volyn newspapers. \n