Oleksandr Oleksandrovych Moroz (born 29 February 1944) is a Ukrainian politician. He was the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada twice, from 1994 to 1998 and again from 2006 to 2007. Moroz is one of the founders and the leader of the Socialist Party of Ukraine, formerly an influential political party in Ukraine. Moroz lost parliamentary representation when the Socialist Party failed to secure sufficient number of votes (2.86%) in the 2007 snap parliamentary election, falling 0.14% short of the 3% election threshold. Early life and career Oleksandr Oleksandrovych Moroz was born on 29 February 1944 in the village of , in what was then the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union. After graduating from the local school in 1960, Moroz graduated from the Agricultural Academy of the Ukrainian SSR to become a mechanical engineer. He then worked in many careers, including as a teacher and engineer for twelve years. Moroz joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, moving from the First Secretary of local Regional Committee of the Communist Party to the position of the Head of the Kyiv Oblast Committee and the Oblast Trade Union Committee. He was a recipient of the Medal "For Labour Valour". He was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1972 to 1991. Kravchuk and Kuchma years Moroz became a deputy of the Verkhovna Rada in 1990. During the August 1991 Declaration of Independence of Ukraine, Moroz was the leader of the Communist Party in the Verkhovna Rada. On 26 October 1991, he arranged the congress that formed the Socialist Party of Ukraine (SPU) as a successor of the Soviet-era Communist Party of Ukraine. Moroz ran as a presidential candidate as a nominee of the Socialist Party of Ukraine in the 1994 and 1999 presidential elections, but he came third both times, with 13.04% of the vote in 1994 and 11.29% in 1999. In 1999, many experts predicted that Moroz had a chance to defeat incumbent Leonid Kuchma in the election run-off and according to many observers the government rigged the election results in favour of Petro Symonenko (of the Communist Party of Ukraine) in order to make sure that unpopular Symonenko, rather than Moroz, would compete against Kuchma in the run-off vote. In 1996, Moroz together with several other parties prevented President Kuchma's attempt to concentrate most of the powers in the President's hands and led