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Lawmakers Say Tymoshenko To Challenge Ukraine Vote Results

Yanukovych supporters celebrate at a rally in front of the Central Election Commision in Kyiv today.

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Last updated (GMT/UTC): 09.02.2010 16:19

Lawmakers from the bloc of Ukraine's prime minister, presidential challenger Yulia Tymoshenko, say she intends to mount a legal challenge to the results of the weekend presidential runoff that handed a narrow victory to rival Viktor Yanukovych.

Yanukoych came out ahead by a 3.5-percent margin in a vote that was judged by international observers to be free and fair.

Tymoshenko Bloc (BYuT) deputy Serhiy Sobolev told parliament today that the vote "displayed a cynical violation of Ukrainian law by Yanukovych's team, pressure on the electors and a broad arsenal of falsification by the Party of Regions."

Ukrainian news agency UNIAN quotes BYuT parliamentarian Oleh Liashko as saying that "at least 1 million ballots were rigged during the presidential runoff in Donetsk and Luhansk regions and Crimea" -- regions in the east of the country that are Yanukovych strongholds.

Olena Shustik, deputy chair of the BYuT faction, said that the decision was made late on February 8 to contest the results and to request a recount.

Tymoshenko herself has not made any public statements since the results were announced. She is quoted by a local newspaper, "Ukrainska Pravda," as telling a party meeting on February 8 that she "will never recognize" Yanukovych's victory. Before the election, she had called on supporters to take to the streets in case of electoral fraud.

Some Tymoshenko supporters say they do not back a challenge to the results, however.

Vice Prime Minister Mykola Tomenko, a close Tymoshenko ally, told Ukrainian television network Channel 5, "We need to admit defeat, and go into the opposition."

With more than 99.97 percent of votes counted, Yanukovych was declared the winner with 48.95 percent of the votes, with the vast majority of his support coming from the Russian-speaking east of the country. Tymoshenko received 45.47 percent, the majority of her support coming from the Ukrainian-speaking west.

Yanukovych was today quoted by his website as saying that Tymoshenko "risks turning herself from the heroine of the Orange Revolution into its executioner" if she does not concede.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev today weighed in more cautiously than his predecessor, Vladimir Putin, after the abortive 2004 runoff between Yanukovych and Viktor Yushchenko.

In a statement, Medvedev congratulated Yanukovych "on the conclusion of the election campaign, which was highly rated by international observers, and on the success achieved in the presidential elections," according to Reuters.

In a statement, the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv called the vote a step "in the consolidation of Ukraine's democracy."

compiled by Richard Solash from RFE/RL, local, and agency reports

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Comments

by: cherkasy5 from: Lviv

February 09, 2010 12:55

Yulia Tymoshenko is about to show the world once and for all, that all her pro-European, pro-democratic rhetoric was nothing but a phony front for her egomaniacal, autocratic obsessions.

Tymoshenko's contempt for the democratic process is disgusting. She believes that it is only democracy when her side wins. This is the sick philosophy of a twisted mind.

Yanukovich, like him or not, has won the presidential election by 850,000 votes. The margin is significant, and both Western and Russian observers called the vote clean.

A poll on ICTV last night showed that an overwhelming majority of Ukrainians believe Tymoshenko should recognize Yanukovich's victory. Even a majority of Tymoshenko's own voters disapprove of challenging the election result. She has no significant basis of support. This is a desperate bluff to hang on to power.

You can be sure that Tymoshenko is taking this step in consultations with Vladimir Putin, with the goal of de-stabilizing Ukraine and dis-crediting the democracy. It is an insane situation when 85 percent of Lviv oblast and the North American diaspora have backed Vladimir Putin's candidate. For Putin, Tymoshenko's loss in Ukraine's election is another humiliating personal defeat.

Tymoshenko, having lost the election, has only 2 choices: she can go into opposition like a normal European politician, rebuild and reform her party, and take her chances in the next election. Or she can go down the path of self-destruction and betrayal of democracy. Unfortunately, it was never difficult to predict which option she would choose.

by: Teacher from: Lviv

February 10, 2010 04:57

A lot of false, a lot of fround with those elections, a lot of unjustice. All Christians voted for Yulia.
Criminal cannot be president. His portrets cannot be placed in schools...

by: nancy from: usa

February 10, 2010 07:34

re: Tymoshenko, Putin's patsy? Tymoshenko's agenda in destabilizing Ukraine and discrediting democracy? Hogwash.
The Party of the Regions, spell that Ukrainophobia, was brewing and prioritized by the Kremlin way back when Ukraine first re-asserted her nationhood, dropped S.S.R. and refused to be "milked" by Russia. Give me a break.
So, now, the country turns from "orange" to "blue", I gues the best we can hope for is that the "blue" leader remembers and doesn't politically and diplomatically desecrate the "yellow" (Colors of the Ukrainian national flag) and is ever mindful in thought, word and deed of what the Ukrainian trident (tryzub) actually stands for.

by: cherkasy5 from: Lviv

February 10, 2010 14:41

Tymoshenko's BYT party is divided between MPs who actually have pro-European views and are concerned about their future political credibility on the one hand, opposed to the other camp who are just riding the Tymoshenko power train for their maximum personal benefit and have no real political ideology.

Tymoshenko's decision to challenge the election results reflects the hard-line position of the latter camp - Turchinov, Senchenko, Korolevska, Karmazin, and probably also some business interests led by Zhevago. This wing of BYT has nothing to lose by dragging out the process as long as possible. I believe that Nemyria also belongs to this camp of BYT, since like Tymo, he has had nothing to say since the election.

However, the moderate, more progressive wing of BYT - Tomenko, Shevchenko, Oliynik, Mischenko, and others understand that the only chance for BYT to stay relevant is to re-group in opposition. A re-organized BYT will be a smaller but likely more cohesive movement.

by: Victoria from: Kiev

February 11, 2010 00:09

Timoshenko is the biggest cheater and bandit in the world!
She is the completely criminal person who stole milliards of dollars from Ukraine together with her partner in crime Pavel Lazarenko.
Please look for the film "Stealing Popcorn" in Internet (made in USA last December).
Ukraine hates Timoshenko!

by: elmer

February 11, 2010 04:23

Yanukovych's blog makes no sense - how can Tymoshenko be the "executioner" of the Orange Revolution by resorting to legal means to explore and investigate vote fraud by the Yanukovych camp?

A member of the Cental Election Commission has already stated that based no a preliminary review of the complaints filed, there is a basis to go forward with an investigation of vote fraud by the Yanukovych camp - and to do a recount in some of the voting districts.

Link to Ukrainian Pravda article in Ukrainian:

http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2010/02/10/4753265/

by: Michael Lee from: China

February 11, 2010 04:39

Will Tymoshenko behaves like Ms. Hillary Clinton?

by: elmer

February 11, 2010 14:48

The results of the presidential election in 2004-2005, geographically, and in 2010, geographically, were identical. Except that in 2004-2005, Yushchenko got 51% of the vote to Yanukovych's 48%. This year, the it was 48% for Yanukovych, and 45% for Tymoshenko.

The Western press keep pounding on the idea of "free and fair elections."

Yes - that's the good news. But Ukrainians elected a criminal - Yanukovych, who was twice convicted, and who was involved in falsifying presidential elections. He and his Party of Regions/Kuchmists have been solely and mainly interested in serving the oligarchs, such as Akhmetov and Kolesnkov, and the Donbass region in eastern/southern Ukraine.

From Paul Manafort and Phil Griffin, who manage campaigns for US Republicans, the Party of Regions and Yanukovych have managed to spout some democratic-sounding platitudes.

But the same old Kuchma oligarchs still have a stranglehold on government.

What are the excuses made for Yanukovych? "Well, anyone could have been arrested for anything in the sovok unioni." Excuse number 2 - "well, there was no court that found falsification of elections in 2004."

Right - the court merelyordered a re-vote on a whim. That's the type of rationalization engaged in by a twisted group of sovok Kuchmist leftovers to provide excuses for a criminal as president.

On top of that, Hanna Herman gets out on TV and in the media and states that Akhmetov (and other oligarchs from the Party of Regions) are "givers of jobs." In other words, if you don't keep the oligarchs from the Party of Regions in power, if you don't continue to allow them to abuse government for their own personal wealth - you lose your job.

A zebra can't change its stripes. Yanukovych and his merry band of thieving oligarchs can't - and won't - change their stripes.

And they count on the same old people to vote for the same old people., complete with the same old oligarch system which is strangling Ukraine.

Eastern Ukraine reminds one of the "yellow-dog Democrats" in the southern states of the US - if a yellow-dog ran for office from the Party of Regions, they would vote for him.

And they did.