Yanukovych wants to fight election defeat in courts
Ukraine Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych showed no signs of giving in to pressure to step down, insisting he would challenge the results of Sunday’s presidential vote that gave opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko a solid victory.
Parliament passed a no-confidence vote in Yanukovych on December 1, but by law he has 60 days to submit his resignation. He has called parliament’s move illegal.
“It is a matter of my principles not to submit a resignation,” Yanukovych told reporters yesterday. “I know why they insist on that … they are shivering with fear.”
He said, however, that Deputy Prime Minister Mykola Azarov remained “directly in charge” of the government’s work. Azarov, who is also finance minister, acted as the caretaker prime minister during Yanukovych’s leave during campaigning for the December 26 presidential run-off.
Yanukovych said he wanted “to focus on the final stages of the election process”.
Ukrainian media reported today that he intended to take another leave of absence, but Yanukovych’s campaign denied the reports.
“The prime minister is performing his duties,” a campaign official said on condition of anonymity.
Yanukovych was declared the winner of the November 21, second-round presidential vote, but hundreds of thousands of Yushchenko orange-clad backers massed in Kiev to protest election fraud and the Supreme Court eventually annulled the ballot, forcing Sunday’s rerun.
Yushchenko’s radical ally Yulia Tymoshenko travelled yesterday to the eastern city of Donetsk, Yanukovych’s hometown, where she answered a series of hostile questions in a live television appearance.
She wore a Shakhtar Donetsk soccer club orange team T-shirt, telling the audience: “It is your colour. It is our colour.”
Tymoshenko has been tipped as one of the possible choices for the next prime minister, but naming her to the job could exacerbate tensions because Tymoshenko, known for her fiery rhetoric and her calls for a seizure of power during the recent weeks of crisis, is anathema to Yanukovych supporters.
Yushchenko’s spokeswoman Irina Gerashchenko denied a report by the Interfax news agency that cited the opposition leader as saying he would propose Tymoshenko for the job.
“It’s too early to begin with names,” Yushchenko said later on the TV5 channel.
Yanukovych’s campaign submitted an appeal to the Central Election Commission asking that Sunday’s vote be declared invalid, aide Nestor Shufrych said Wednesday. The commission’s final preliminary results showed Yushchenko winning the vote with a margin of about 8%.
If election officials reject the appeal, Shufrych said, the campaign would appeal to the Supreme Court.
Yanukovych’s chances of succeeding with that tactic appear minimal. International election monitors did not report mass falsifications in Sunday’s voting, in sharp contrast to their criticism of the November election.
Yanukovych also appears unable to marshal protest gatherings of the size that backed Yushchenko. Yanukovych, who was supported by the Kremlin, draws his support largely from Ukraine’s east where pro-Russia sentiment is high, while Kiev and Ukraine’s west are strongholds of support for Yushchenko, a Western-leaning reformer.
Yanukovych had intended to chair a cabinet session yesterday, but about 1,000 protesters blocked the entrances to the government headquarters building. The ministers met later without Yanukovych at the Finance Ministy, said Vitaliy Lukianenko, Azarov’s spokesman.
Yanukovych lashed out at his former backer, outgoing President Leonid Kuchma, Ukraine’s parliament and its judicial system for failing to prevent what he called a “seizure of power – a scenario that was planned abroad, tested in Yugoslavia, Georgia, Romania and has been applied in Ukraine”.
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