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Ukraine poll: ‘Civil war’ warning

Posted: Tuesday November 23, 2004 12:00 PM EST

By CNN News

Ukrainian opposition presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko has warned the country could descend into civil war if the election results he called "a sham" are not annulled and he is not named president.

KIEV, Ukraine. At the end of a parliamentary session Tuesday attended only by his supporters, Yushchenko symbolically read the oath of office.

Meanwhile outside the building, tens of thousands of demonstrators braved the cold, chanting his last name and waving orange flags representing his party.

Late Monday, the Ukrainian election commission said Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych had a slim but mathematically winning lead over Yushchenko, prompting demonstrations from Kiev to the nationalist center Lviv in the west.

Yushchenko—and U.S. and European election observers—said the vote was fraudulent. Kiev, Lviv and several other cities announced they would not accept the results of the vote and would recognize only Yushchenko as the winner.

The demonstrations have so far been peaceful, but Yushchenko called on his supporters not to stand down until the vote was corrected, beginning with civil disobedience. He warned that Ukraine risked “civil conflict” if the vote were to stand.

Yushchenko would need the help of other parties in parliament to annul the vote, and on Tuesday, the chamber lacked enough for even a quorum. The politicians spoke anyway, watched on a large television screen set up outside for the demonstrators.

When Yushchenko stepped before the cameras, the crowd outside parliament roared its approval and again chanted his name.

Should Parliament pass a no-confidence vote against the election commission, the matter would go to the Supreme Court, which could then annul the vote in some areas, including some in which as much as 95 percent of the vote was reported cast for Yanukovych.

Yushchenko, a pro-Western liberal, and Yanukovych, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, fought a bitterly contested runoff battle. After the election commission’s announcement Monday night, Yushchenko’s supporters filled Independence Square, where they camped overnight.

Yushchenko told thousands of supporters to stay in Kiev’s main square to keep a tent encampment safe from security forces who he said want to dismantle it. He later led the demonstrators to the parliament building.

Meanwhile, Yanukovych said that the majority of voters had backed him.

“The preliminary results are optimistic—a majority of voters have shown their preference for my position and program,” he said in a written statement.

Officials earlier said that with 99.38 percent of precincts counted, Yanukovych had 49.42 percent to Yushchenko’s 46.70 percent.

Earlier partial results showed Yanukovych less than one percentage point ahead. An exit poll, conducted under a Western-funded program, gave Yushchenko 54 percent of the vote to Yanukovych’s 43 percent.

Another poll put Yushchenko ahead by 49.4 to 45.9 percent, the Interfax news agency reported.

But Russian President Putin congratulated Yanukovych on his victory in a presidential election, Interfax news agency reported.

Reporting from Brazil, where Putin is on an official visit, Interfax quoted his press secretary as saying the Russian president had telephoned Yanukovych, telling him “the battle had been hard-fought, but open and honest, and his victory was convincing.”

Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Council of Europe, the European Parliament and NATO criticized the balloting.

“There was certainly fraud, though this is difficult to quantify,” a leading member of the OSCE delegation, Gert-Hinrich Ahrens, told CNN.

He said there had been incidents of violence and intimidation—and in some areas 5 percent of voters had been added to the lists on voting day, many of them with certificates allowing them to vote away from their place of residence.

Even stronger criticism came from Richard Lugar, chairman of the U.S. Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee.

“It is now apparent that a concerted and forceful program of election-day fraud and abuse was enacted with either the leadership or cooperation of governmental authorities,” said Lugar, who was sent to Kiev as U.S. President George W. Bush’s envoy.

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