Yuschenko triumphant at last
Opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko celebrated his apparently decisive triumph in Ukraine’s protracted presidential contest today, thanking the protesters who spent weeks camped out in the capital’s frigid streets for securing his electoral victory and the nation’s freedom.
“Now, today, the Ukrainian people have won. I congratulate you,” he told a jubilant crowd last night in Kiev’s Independence Square, the centre of massive protests following the last month’s presidential runoff that was annulled after fraud allegations.
“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.”
Three separate exit polls gave him a 15 to 20% lead over Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych.
But the official count gave Yushchenko a narrower lead: With 93% of the votes counted by 0600 GMT, Yushchenko was leading with 53.16% compared to Yanukovych’s 43.06 .
Yushchenko was not taking chances. He called his supporters back out onto the square this afternoon to defend the election victory, if necessary, and asked for their help in what he called the main task facing the nation: forming a government that would be trusted.
Some 12,000 foreign observers had watched Sunday’s unprecedented third round to help prevent a repeat of the apparent widespread fraud in November that sparked massive protests after Kremlin favourite Yanukovych was declared the winner.
Both campaigns complained of violations, but Davydovych said neither the candidates nor their official representatives had lodged protests. Monitors said they’d seen far fewer problems this round, in which 77.22 % of registered voters turned out.
The new atmosphere was reflected in the comparatively small number of Yushchenko backers who poured into the square to hear his victory speech – in contrast with the tens of thousands who had thronged it earlier in the crisis.
About 5,000 applauded and set off fireworks. They waved bright orange flags - his campaign’s emblematic colour – and clasped hands and danced.
“Today we began to live! Today, we rose off our knees and showed ourselves and the world that our future can’t be dictated to us. We will dictate it,” said Olga Drik, 21, a Kiev student, who had covered her purse in orange ribbons.
Earlier, Yushchenko told journalists and others crammed into his orange-bedecked campaign headquarters that Ukraine was beginning “a new political life” that would include neither current President Leonid Kuchma nor Yanukovych, the prime minister and candidate whom Kuchma had hand-picked as his successor.
“I am convinced that it is fashionable to be a citizen of Ukraine. It is stylish. It is beautiful. Three or four months ago, few people knew where Ukraine was; today, almost the whole world starts its day from thinking about what is happening in Ukraine,” Yushchenko said.
Even before the exit poll results were announced, a glum-looking Yanukovych told reporters that “if there is a defeat, there will be a strong opposition.” But he did not concede and hinted he would challenge the results in the courts.
“We will defend the rights of our voters by all legal means,” he said.
Voters faced a crucial choice at the election. 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 emphasises tightening the Slavic country’s ties with Russia as a means of maintaining stability.
The political crisis has also cast a spotlight on the rift between Ukraine’s Russian-speaking, heavily industrial east and cosmopolitan Kiev and the west, where Ukrainian nationalism runs deep.
Yanukovych backers fear discrimination by the Ukrainian-speaking west, and some eastern regions briefly threatened to seek autonomy if Yushchenko won the presidency.
