Oekraïense presidentsverkiezingen, de oppositie op winst

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Kamp Janoekovitsj dient honderden bezwaren in (video)

Uitgegeven: 27 december 2004 13:13
Laatst gewijzigd: 27 december 2004 17:12

KIEV - Medestanders van de Oekraïense premier Janoekovitsj die ogenschijnlijk de presidentsverkiezingen van zondag heeft verloren, hebben honderden bezwaarschriften ingediend tegen het verloop van de stembusgang.

De Centrale Kiescommissie maakte maandag bekend dat het 550 bezwaren heeft ontvangen, aldus het Russische persbureau Interfax.

Bekijk video:
Modem/ Breedband


Na telling van bijna alle stemmen (98,1 procent) ligt oppositieleider Viktor Joesjtsjenko met 52,3 procent voor op Janoekovitsj die 43,9 procent kreeg. Campagneleider Tsjornovil van de premier sprak na het sluiten van de stemlokalen op zondag meteen al van massale fraude.

Zeker 1,5 miljoen kiesgerechtigden die slecht ter been zouden zijn, konden niet stemmen door een nieuwe wet die thuisstemmen verbiedt. Janoekovitsj zou hierdoor disproportioneel zwaar getroffen zijn, aldus Tsjornovil.

Oekraïense waarnemers denken niet dat de protesten veel uit zullen halen en betwijfelen of het kamp van de premier wel voldoende bewijzen in handen heeft om de zaak hard te maken.

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Janoekovitsj niet akkoord met verkiezingsnederlaag

Uitgegeven: 27 december 2004 17:35
Laatst gewijzigd: 27 december 2004 17:37

KIEV - Het team van de pro-Russische Viktor Janoekovitsj stapt naar het hooggerechtshof in Oekraïne om de nederlaag van de premier in de presidentsverkiezingen van zondag aan te vechten. Het team van Janoekovitsj repte van onregelmatigheden bij de stembusgang, die door de pro-westerse Viktor Joesjtsjenko zijn gewonnen.

Een woordvoerder van Janoekovitsj repte "van systematische schendingen" bij de derde ronde van de verkiezingen. Na de vorige ronde op 21 november van de presidentverkiezingen wendde Joesjtsjenko zich tot het hooggerechtshof. Het hof oordeelde daarop dat de verkiezingen van 21 november moesten worden overgedaan wegens fraude.


Voorzitter Barroso van de Europese Commissie verwelkomde maandag de zege van Joesjtsjenko. Hij noemde zijn zege "een goede dag voor de banden van Oekraïne met de EU". Ook riep hij alle partijen in het land op de uitslag van de stembusgang te accepteren.

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Ukraine's Opposition Wins Vote, But Rivals Hint At Challenge
By Askold Krushelnycky

Kyiv/Prague, 27 December 2004 (RFE/RL) -- Ukrainian opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko had an unassailable lead over rival candidate Viktor Yanukovych with more than 98 percent of votes counted from yesterday's presidential election, but Yanukovych still had not conceded defeat late today and allies suggested he would challenge the results in court.


Figures from the Central Electoral Commission showed Yushchenko with over 52 percent of the votes counted earlier today, compared to less than 44 percent for Yanukovych.

Turnout was over 77 percent, the commission indicated.

Yushchenko declared victory early this morning in a rally in the capital Kyiv.

Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski has already congratulated the opposition leader on his victory, according to a press release from Kwasniewski's office quoted by Reuters.

New Challenge To Results?

But sources within Prime Minister Yanukovych's campaign suggested tonight -- as Yanukovych remained silent over the result -- that they intend to challenge the results of the latest vote with the Supreme Court.

A Yanukovych ally, Nestor Shufrych, charged falsification, saying the Yanukovych team will appeal.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) took a different view, saying today that the vote shows the country has taken "a great step forward toward free and fair elections."

The head of the OSCE observer mission, Bruce George, said this was the general view among the monitoring organizations.

"I am much happier to be in a position to announce that it is the collective judgment of these organizations represented here that the Ukrainian elections have moved substantially closer to meeting OSCE and other European and international standards," George said.

However, George added that the election was not perfect and that the mission's final report will detail what observers saw as its shortcomings.

European Union High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana called on Ukraine's political leaders to work together to unite the country after the divisive election.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell broke the official silence in Washington today over the vote and called the Ukrainian election "a historic moment for democracy." He said it appeared the Ukrainian people had had the opportunity to choose their own government and added the election appeared to have been "full and free."

Early Signs Of Opposition Win

Yushchenko spent the day celebrating what he predicted was a victory during an overnight opposition rally following the balloting.

"Dear friends, I would just like to say, for 14 years we were independent, but we weren't free," Yushchenko told the crowd. "For 14 years there was tyranny in all of Ukraine, the tyranny of [outgoing President Leonid] Kuchma, [his predecessor Leonid] Kravchuk, and [Prime Minister Viktor] Yanukovych. Today we can say that is all in the past; before us lies an independent and free Ukraine."

The repeat vote appeared to have taken place with no major electoral violations. The vote was monitored by some 12,000 international observers, with foreign scrutiny heightened following flawed late-November voting that was eventually declared invalid by the Ukrainian Supreme Court.

"Today we are turning the page of disrespect for people, of lies, censorship, and violence," Yushchenko said. "The people who were dragging Ukraine into a hole are at this moment becoming [a part of] the past. A new epoch is beginning of a new great democracy. Many tens of millions of Ukrainians have dreamed of this."

Ukraine's Central Electoral Commission indicated early this morning that Yushchenko had secured enough votes to ensure him victory.

Overnight Jubilation

In the early hours this morning, after three separate exit polls showed he had a big lead, Yushchenko went to Independence Square in the heart of the capital to address his supporters.
They welcomed him with the same chants of "Yushchenko" that have echoed around the capital and the country for the past month in a nonstop protest against the government. It was in that same square that hundreds of thousands of Yushchenko supporters gathered on the evening of 21 November to protest the massive fraud perpetrated by the government in that day's first presidential runoff.

The protests began 17 days of demonstrations that have since become known as the "Orange Revolution" -- for the orange color the Yushchenko campaign adopted.

Yushchenko, flanked by his wife and senior political allies, bowed today to supporters and said: "My first thanks are to you. The people proved their power. They rebelled against probably the most cynical regime in Eastern Europe."

International Plans

Yushchenko has said his ambition is for Ukraine to join NATO, the European Union, and the World Trade Organization (WTO). He has said that he will cooperate with Moscow as an equal but added that the era during which Ukraine was treated as a subordinate was over.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin had openly backed Yanukovych, arriving in Ukraine on the eve of two earlier rounds of elections, in October and November, to boost Yanukovych's chances. Putin was quick to congratulate Yanukovych for his official victory on 21 November, a win marred by sufficient fraud to prompt the Supreme Court to order the new vote.

Yanukovych supported Putin's plan to re-create a Moscow-led bloc, comprising Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia. That scheme now looks doomed.

Yanukovych courted Ukraine's large ethnic-Russian minority -- around 9 million of the country's 48 million population -- with promises that Russian would become a state language.

Russia's interference had caused resentment among opposition supporters. Many of Yushchenko's close colleagues suspect Russia of involvement in the nearly fatal poisoning of the opposition leader in September that has left his face badly disfigured. The EU and the United States rebuked Putin for meddling in the election.

East-West Divide

But the results from yesterday's vote suggest once more that Ukraine is deeply divided, with the western and central regions backing Yushchenko while the east mostly supported Yanukovych.

Yanukovych's senior political allies in some of the eastern regions threatened in November to seek autonomy, something they have since moved away from. A member of parliament from the Social Democrat Party-united, which supported Yanukovych, Ihor Shurma, suggested some kind of devolution might happen -- but not for a while.

"Perhaps a federal model will be beneficial for Ukraine, but not today. Ukraine is not ready for that today," Shurma said. "Economically it's not strong enough. At present it faces many risks. Therefore, it is not appropriate to raise this question at this time."

In an early hint that he might accept the results of yesterday's vote, Yanukovych promised to form a robust opposition in parliament to any Yushchenko-appointed government.

The leader of his campaign team, Taras Chornovyl, even predicted Yanukovych supporters in parliament would attract some of Yushchenko's current political allies, including the Socialists and the Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc, to fight the parliamentary elections scheduled for 2006 as a coalition.

"If Yushchenko indeed does become president, then I think that in the near future politicians like Yuliya Tymoshenko and others will join us," Chornovyl said.

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Ukraine: Will The Country Now Orient Itself Toward The West?
By Jeremy Bransten

Now that opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko appears to have clinched a majority in the Ukrainian presidential vote, what are the likely implications for Ukraine's foreign policy, its relations with the West and Russia?


Prague, 27 December 2004 (RFE/RL) -- Throughout the electoral campaign and the demonstrations he led through the streets of Kyiv, Yushchenko promised his people big changes if they elected him president.

Speaking this morning in the Ukrainian capital, Yushchenko said the decisive moment had at last arrived in the form of "a new epoch of a new, great democracy" to replace a period of "disrespect for people, of lies, censorship, and violence."

Yushchenko is being listened to closely not only in Kyiv, but also in Moscow, Brussels, Washington, and other capitals. The leader of the "Orange Revolution" has said the changes he intends to bring to Ukraine are as much about internal reforms as they are about foreign policy.

Although he campaigned on a vow to undo the legacy of outgoing President Leonid Kuchma, Yushchenko's foreign-policy platform is ironically a throwback to Kuchma's early program -- at least as it was presented to the world.

When he first came into office, Kuchma talked about closer EU integration. He signed a special partnership agreement with NATO and even raised the possibility of membership of the alliance.

An Evolving Foreign Policy

After Kuchma's popularity at home and abroad sank as he became mired in corruption scandals, he turned to Russia as his new ally, saying Ukraine needed a "multivector" foreign policy that balanced eastern and western interests.

In reality, analyst Taras Kuzio of George Washington University in the United States suggested, Kuchma had no real foreign policy -- just a lot of promises and temporary alliances designed to keep him and his clan in power.

Kuzio, interviewed by RFE/RL before the vote, said he expected Yushchenko to end this "pretend foreign policy" and follow through on the goals Kuchma originally set out.

"What we'll have is no longer a mismatch between domestic and foreign policies," Kuzio said. "We'll no longer just have empty rhetoric. We'll have more concrete substance to those foreign policy objectives, which have already been raised on the agenda, which are EU and NATO membership. It's not Yushchenko who's going to be raising the issue of NATO and EU membership. They have been Ukrainian objectives for a while but not serious objectives."

Alexander Rahr, an expert on the region at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin whom RFE/RL also interviewed before yesterday's election, said he would expect fundamental changes in Ukraine's foreign policy under Yushchenko

Yushchenko is going to take back are announcements, statements, made by President Kuchma concerning Ukraine's future foreign policy," Rahr said. "When Kuchma said he couldn't foresee Ukraine in NATO and the European Union within the next couple of years, he made a clear point about reorienting his foreign policy towards Russia. I think this will change under President Yushchenko. Yushchenko will say that the intention of Ukraine's foreign policy is directed towards integration with Western military, economic, and political structures and not so much in the future with Russia. I think this will bring fundamental change, and we can expect it."

Although Ukraine's geopolitical re-orientation, if it occurs, would affect relations with Russia, experts have said they believe economic ties are not likely to suffer. While prime minister, Yushchenko showed he was open to Russian business investment in Ukraine.

But as for the rest of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), that is another matter.

Kuchma pursued a free-trade zone linking Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and Kazakhstan. But Kuzio said that if its economic value cannot be justified -- especially if Western investment starts to pour into Ukraine -- then it will become a casualty of the Yushchenko administration.

"There will be, I believe, a short period of coldness in relations with Russia. That's because of Vladimir Putin's overt intervention in the Ukrainian elections and also because of the strong suspicions that Russia is behind the attempted poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko," Kuzio said. "But the best way to understand the transformation would be: continued pragmatic economic cooperation with Russia, no longer any interest in the CIS joint-economic space together with Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan."

EU Membership?

The big question is how the European Union, which played a leading role in mediating and end to the electoral crisis, might react to Ukraine's westward swing. Former European Commission President Romano Prodi once famously declared that Ukraine had as much chance of joining the EU as New Zealand.
Is Europe ready for Ukraine and its 47 million people? Rahr said he does not believe EU membership is a realistic prospect for Kyiv.

"For many Europeans, Ukraine is still too big, too difficult, too far away, with a too complicated economic system, too much corruption," Rahr said. "So I think there are a lot of arguments which will be made inside the European Union against giving Ukraine a full-fledged prospect for membership in the European Union."

But Rahr said he does see prospects for a special partnership with the EU. He said he believes countries like Poland and Germany are interested in such a relationship and will push for the EU to adopt a dynamic and pro-active policy toward Ukraine.

"I expect countries like Poland, probably even Germany but also the Baltic states and the new leadership in Romania, to try to force the other group members in the European Union to change the direction towards Ukraine," Rahr said.

As the United States' relations with Russia go through a rough patch, experts believe Washington will show renewed interest in upgrading its ties with Ukraine as well.

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Donetsk wary of Yushchenko
By Jonathan Charles
BBC News, Donetsk, Ukraine

Eastern Ukraine was never going to give a warm welcome to the election winner.

In this mainly Russian-speaking part of the country, which looks more towards Moscow than eastern Europe, Viktor Yushchenko is regarded with deep suspicion.

Gloom has descended on the city of Donetsk, which voted overwhelmingly for his rival, Viktor Yanukovych.

People here had been threatening to march to Kiev to protest at what they see as an election hijacked by the West. But in the cold light of day they are taking their lead from their political leaders.

Mr Yanukovych has been calling for calm and promised that there will be no street demonstrations or calls for eastern Ukraine to separate from the western part of the country.

Most people I have spoken to say that instead, they will work out what they can do to oppose Mr Yushchenko in the medium and long-term. Sasha, in his 30s, told me: "I hear that Yushchenko wants to come to Donetsk to tell us that we can all be friends, but don't expect us to love him".

The people of Donetsk are now turning their thoughts to the next parliamentary elections.They hope that Mr Yanukovych will do well in those and can form a strong parliamentary opposition to Viktor Yushchenko.

They will also be watching the new president closely as he tries to reform the economy. The east likes to think of itself as Ukraine's economic powerhouse, full of coal mines and factories.

Economic concerns

Some miners have said that if Mr Yushchenko tries to cut the national budget and subsidies for the mines, leading to pit closures and job losses, then there will be strike action. The miners not only dislike the new president's pro-Western politics, they are also concerned about his economics.

Many workers in Donetsk say the whole economy is based here, and if necessary, they will bring it to a standstill.

Others in Donetsk have more specific concerns.

Ukraine's wealthiest businessman, Rinat Akhmetov, lives here and is one of the oligarchs whom Mr Yushchenko regards as having too great a role in politics. He was a supporter of Mr Yanukovych, but he, too, is now sending out messages that he is prepared to work with the new president.

Mr Yushchenko has said that he wants to investigate the $880m privatisation of a steelworks which was bought by Mr Akhmetov, suggesting it was sold too cheaply.

Mr Akhmetov told me: "I wasn't the organiser of the sale, only one of the bidders, and if the new president wants to investigate then that's up to him".

However, he also made it clear he thought it was time to reform the economy and he supported the idea of improving relations with the European Union. Such an olive branch to Mr Yushchenko is unlikely to be reciprocated, though.

Businessmen like Mr Akhmetov can expect to have much less influence in future - another sign that life in eastern Ukraine and the rest of the country could be very different in the months to come.

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Analysis: Ukraine looks west
By Paul Reynolds
World Affairs correspondent, BBC News website

The presidential election result in Ukraine is another striking example of the "people power" which has swept central and eastern Europe over the last 15 years.

The "Orange Revolution" will take its place alongside the "Velvet Revolution" in former Czechoslovakia, the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia and all the other revolutions which might not have a name but which certainly had an effect.

These peaceful revolutions have transformed the political landscape of Europe. And just as the changes in other countries led to questions about EU and Nato membership, so the election of Viktor Yushchenko will inevitably do so in Ukraine.

The European Union is likely to have to re-examine its rather hands-off attitude to potential Ukrainian membership.

Liberalism triumphs

The EU will not want to engage in triumphalism against Russia, whose President Vladimir Putin openly backed Viktor Yanukovych in the first, disputed election.

But the boundaries of modern Europe have now been pushed further east, and Russia itself is finding that its immediate western neighbours have diverged from the authoritarian path it has trod under Mr Putin. The long-term effect on potential liberalisation in Russia itself will be interesting to watch.

There will be voices in the EU calling for swift action to consolidate Ukraine's new position, which will be far more open to western ideas of political and economic reform.

When he was appointed prime minister by President Leonid Kuchma in 1999, Mr Yushchenko, who once headed Ukraine's national bank, initiated a series of economic reforms.

These measures ran up against entrenched interests, led by a combination of communists and Ukraine's oligarchs who had done well out of post-communist rule. He lost office in 2001, but those same policies can now be expected to make a return appearance.

At the moment, Ukraine has a partnership agreement with the EU and is regarded as one of the countries to be fostered under the so-called European Neighbourhood Policy, which is designed to extend friendship but not membership.

The partnership agreement does foresee the development of free trade in exchange for political reforms, but this process might now not only be speeded up but superseded altogether.

Looking west

Ukrainian membership of the EU could well be on the agenda before too long.

In an article on 7 December for Open Democracy, an online political magazine, Katinka Barysch and Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform argued: "The EU should, and probably will, rethink its long-standing position that Ukraine 'has as much reason to be in the EU as New Zealand', in the words of Romano Prodi, the recently departed European Commission president".

The authors did counsel against the EU "making a big noise about Ukraine becoming an EU member". But experience elsewhere in eastern Europe has been that a rapid change in a country's internal politics is usually followed by a rapid change in its external relations.

There might not be a big noise, but some noise can be expected.

As for Nato, it already has a partnership agreement with Ukraine, though Ukraine has never walked through the open door to membership that Nato has offered. That, too, might change, though Mr Yushchenko's need to keep strong relations with Russia and his own nationalist sentiments could act against it.

No US puppet

Mr Yushchenko is unlikely to be a client of the West, especially not of the United States, despite claims from those opposing him that his Ukrainian-American wife Kateryna wields great influence. A significant neo-conservative figure in her day, she held office in the human rights bureau at the US State Department in the Reagan administration.

Mr Yushchenko has supported a withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from Iraq and its 1,600-strong force there could be brought home, though probably not before the Iraq election on 30 January.

The real winners are those Ukrainians who use the same words and phrases as one heard in the other peaceful revolutions - words like "truth", "rule of law," decency" and "normality."

The previous regime epitomised the rule of those who had not quite thrown off the old ways of doing things. They claimed to have changed, but underneath it was not that different.

One symbolic moment for me came when I accompanied the Prince of Wales on a visit to Ukraine in 1996. He had just arrived for a lavish dinner in some state palace in Kiev when all the lights failed. They had to drive a Mercedes up to the front door to shine its headlights into the room.