Ukraine election siege continues

Supporters of opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko kept up their siege of government buildings today after pro-government lawmakers blocked election law changes designed to ensure fair balloting in a re-run of the country’s presidential runoff.

Thousands of protesters settled in a tent camp on the main square in the capital Kiev have vowed to remain until the laws are passed.

As a motorcade of five police buses and several patrol cars entered downtown Kiev, the protesters scrambled to warn their comrades at the barricades.

After a brief stand-off with protesters, the convoy was allowed to proceed. “This is just a regular rotation and I am urging you to let us do our job, as you do yours” a tired-looking police captain told Yushchenko’s activists.

Yushchenko yesterday called on the international community to monitor the December 26 re-run of the presidential runoff between him and a Russian-backed candidate after pro-government lawmakers blocked the election law changes on Saturday.

Buoyed by a landmark Supreme Court ruling throwing out Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych’s victory in the November 21 run-off vote as fraudulent, Yushchenko urged international observers to return in full force despite the Christmas holiday to help Ukraine hold a clean election.

“Despite Christmas, the international community must ensure a strong observers’ presence,” Yushchenko told tens of thousands of supporters waving his campaign’s orange flags and shouting his name at Kiev’s main square on Saturday night.

“That will be the day that will determine Ukraine’s fate for decades and centuries ahead.”

The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe will again deploy a full-fledged mission for the re-run, Chairman Solomon Passy pledged.

As the tent camp, bedecked in the opposition’s orange campaign colour, woke to life on a cold morning today, a lone man stood nearby waving a white and blue flag – Yanukovych’s campaign colours.

“I am here to remind them that there are others in Ukraine who do not share their beliefs,” said Hryhory, a middle-aged worker from Pereyslav-Khmelnitsky, not far from the capital. He refused to give his last name.

He described Yushchenko’s supporters as “friendly but deeply wrong.”

Yushchenko’s supporters said they regard Hryhory as kind of a mascot. “He’s a pleasant man and he was with us from the very beginning,” said Andriy Zolotkov, an opposition activist.

Parliament has adjourned until December 14 without passing opposition-backed legislation that would amend the election laws and reshuffle the Central Election Commission, which Yushchenko’s supporters accused of covering up official fraud.

Communists, socialists and pro-government factions in parliament refused to back electoral changes, saying pro-Yushchenko lawmakers had backed out of a deal to also pass constitutional reforms that would transfer some of the president’s powers t parliament.

Yushchenko accused his government foes of trying to trim presidential powers, fearing his victory in the rerun. He also said President Leonid Kuchma, who anointed Yanukovych as his preferred successor, was blocking changes in the electoral laws.

Kuchma, in turn, blamed the opposition for reneging on a compromise agreement brokered last Wednesday by international mediators. The agreement called for parliament to vote for the electoral and constitutional changes all at once.

Kuchma and Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski have tentatively agreed to hold another round of European-sponsored talks tomorrow.