06/11/2003 | Serhiy Hrysch

HEADLINE: Hurt by low turnout, candidate for mayor castrates himself

BYLINE: By Anatoly Gordeyev

DATELINE: DONETSK, June 11

BODY:
The campaign of one of aspirants for mayor of Ukraine's city of Zaporozhye has come to a dramatic
end. He lost. And castrated himself.

He told police, who visited him in hospital, that he emasculated himself "in protest of a low
activity of voters".

The 49-year-old man protested by cutting off his scrotum, the bag of flesh holding testicles.

A hospital spokesman told Itar-Tass that his condition was "satisfactory", and was past danger.

Members of the city election commission told Itar-Tass that the candidate for mayor puzzled the
commission at the very outset of the election race by his programme that was in fact a summary of
the Bible.

Ninety-nine voters cast their ballots for him in Sunday's elections, or 0.035 percent of the city's
total electorate.

LOAD-DATE: June 11, 2003