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Ukraine Election Challenged

Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych refused to accept defeat in the country’s presidential election and vowed Monday to ask the Supreme Court to overturn the result, claiming that millions of his supporters were disenfranchised and that there was systematic fraud. The Central Elections Commission cannot declare Yushchenko the official winner until all legal challenges are […]

Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych refused to accept defeat in the country’s presidential election and vowed Monday to ask the Supreme Court to overturn the result, claiming that millions of his supporters were disenfranchised and that there was systematic fraud.

The Central Elections Commission cannot declare Yushchenko the official winner until all legal challenges are heard by the country’s Supreme Court. That process could take several more weeks. Yanukovych has seven days to file a challenge.

The prime minister said 4.8 million potential voters were not able to cast their ballots because of new electoral laws that restricted voting by the disabled and the use of absentee ballots by people unable to make it to the polls.

Those measures, adopted by parliament before Sunday’s runoff, were designed to limit fraud, but Yanukovych said the new regulations violated the constitution and became an insurmountable barrier for the disabled. He claimed eight sick people died after arriving at polling stations. ~The Washington Post

The total number of votes for the Nov. 21 vote was approximately 30.5 million, and the number of votes for the Dec. 26 vote was approximately 29 million. Perhaps a million and a half voters simply decided, in spite of the tremendous controversy and significance of this election debacle, to stay home or were disgusted with the entire political process. Some might accept at face value the claims of earlier vote-rigging (and thus the discrepancy is explained by Dec. 26 representing the ‘real’ vote), but everything about this election simply reeks of a fix in favour of Yushchenko. This discrepancy between the total figures is significant, especially when Yushchenko’s numbers rose by roughly one million and Yanukovych’s numbers dropped by roughly three million. Such large swings of voting preferences in any country, especially one polarised by such heated controversy, are not at all normal.

There was, of course, nothing free or fair about an election held hostage to a media frenzy, a mob in Kiev and the pressure of foreign governments: if the same events took place in Baghdad next month, the world would rightly mock it as a sham. If there has been no vote tampering in the traditional sense, there has certainly been vote tampering and intimidation through the onslaught of media campaigns and mob tactics in favour of Mr. Yushchenko.

The disenfranchisement of voters may not be as severe as Mr. Yanukovych claims, but the discrepancy in the total tallies does demand further inquiry. The sad thing in all of this is that all major media have so tainted themselves with overt bias in favour of one candidate that their reports are no longer very credible.

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