Ukrainian premier refuses to accept defeat

27/12/2004 - 18:34:23
Opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko savoured his apparent victory in Ukraine’s presidential election rerun tonight, but his bitter opponent refused to admit defeat.

Kremlin favourite, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych said he would go to the Supreme Court to challenge the results.

“I will never recognise such a defeat, because the constitution and human rights were violated in our country and people died,” he said in the capital Kiev.

Official results from Sunday’s election, with votes counted from 99.66% of precincts, gave Yushchenko 52.09% compared to Yanukovych’s 44.12%. Turnout was 77.2%.

Yanukovych said his campaign team had close to 5,000 complaints about how the third round of voting was conducted. He noted in particular the reported deaths of eight voters, and suggested they had been due to a last-minute Constitutional Court decision on voting rights for the disabled.

“And the main question … concerns the deaths of eight people who died during the election. Who will take responsibility for these lives, I’d like to know,” Yanukovych said.

The vast tent camp set up by Yushchenko supporters on Kiev’s main avenue after last month’s fraud-plagued election, which was later annulled, remained in place.

It was an indication that his backers were prepared for further tension despite his victory
Yushchenko thanked his supporters for spending weeks camped out on freezing streets in a show of force that helped overturn results of the runoff election.

12,000 foreign observers watched the unprecedented third-round vote to help prevent a repetition of the fraud and said today that Ukraine had made good progress toward meeting international standards for free and fair elections.

“The Ukrainian elections have moved substantially closer to meeting OSCE and other international standards,” said Bruce George, a Labour MP and head of the delegation from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and other election watchdogs.

Yushchenko, speaking to a jubilant crowd overnight in Kiev’s Independence Square, said: “Now, today, the Ukrainian people have won. I congratulate you.”

“We have been independent for 14 years but we were not free,” Yushchenko said. “Now we can say this is a thing of the past. Now we are facing an independent and free Ukraine.”

Thousands waited for another appearance by Yushchenko tonight, but their numbers were far smaller than the hundreds of thousands who had jammed the square at the height of the protests.

Tension during the fiercely fought election campaign was fuelled by the fraud allegations and Yushchenko’s claims to have been poisoned by authorities in an assassination attempt.

Doctors have confirmed he was poisoned by a nearly lethal amount of dioxin, which severely disfigured his face.

Yushchenko will need monthly blood tests to track how quickly the poison is leaving his body.

Experts say it is likely to dissipate quickly in the first few months but then slow down. Doctors have said they expect a gradual recovery, although they fear an increased long-term risk of a heart attack, cancer or other chronic diseases.

Yanukovych’s headquarters cancelled a rally they had planned for his hometown Donetsk today, a move that suggested apathy among his supporters.

Voters had faced a crucial choice. Ukraine, a nation of 48 million people, is caught between the eastward-expanding European Union and Nato, and an increasingly assertive Russia, its former imperial and Soviet-era master.

Yushchenko, a former Central Bank chief and prime minister, wants to bring Ukraine closer to the West and advance economic and political reform. The Kremlin-backed Yanukovych emphasised tightening the Slavic country’s ties with Russia as a means of maintaining stability.