Yushchenko's backers again block cabinet building

Protesters gathered outside Ukraine’s government headquarters in Kiev today to prevent Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych convening the Cabinet.

Opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko had called for keeping up pressure on his rival, who has refused to concede defeat in the weekend presidential election.

“I ask everyone, especially the people in the tent camp, to strengthen the blockade of the government,” Yushchenko said yesterday, referring to protesters who had taken over one end of Kiev’s stately main avenue, the Kreshchatyk.

About 200 people stood in front of the government building this morning, waving orange campaign flags and not allowing cars to enter. Some 70 protesters stood in a park across the street chanting “Yushchenko!”

Others gathered at Independence Square, the epicentre of the protests.

“More will come and we will show the criminal government that they cannot ignore the people’s will,” said Vasil, a protester from Kiev who identified himself only by his first name.

The main bulk of protesters was expected to gather in Kiev close to 10am (8am Irish time) when the government’s session was expected to begin.

Oleksandr Ternavsky, Yanukovych’s spokesman, said the session would go ahead as planned, and called Yushchenko’s move “completely illegal”.

Under Ukrainian law, the prime minister can retain his post until replaced by the incumbent president or the president-elect.

Final preliminary results released yesterday showed Yushchenko had won Ukraine’s drawn-out and divisive presidential election with 51.99% of the vote to Yanukovych’s 44.19% – a difference of about 2.3 million votes.

“In principle, we have the result,” said Yaroslav Davydovych, the head of the Central Election Commission. ”I don’t know who can doubt it.”

Yanukovych, who returned to work Tuesday as prime minister, has refused to concede defeat and said he will challenge the results of Sunday’s rerun – the court-ordered, third round of voting in the election – in Ukraine’s Supreme Court.

He said his campaign team had nearly 5,000 complaints about how the voting was conducted and claimed that 4.8 million people – more than double the margin of Yushchenko’s victory – had been unable to cast ballots, among them disabled and elderly voters.

Ukraine’s parliament approved restrictions on voting at home in a bid to prevent fraud, but the Constitutional Court threw out the restrictions on the eve of the vote. Many people, however, were unaware of the ruling, Yanukovych’s campaign said.

Yanukovych’s vow to challenge the results echoes Yushchenko’s successful move following the fraud-tainted November 21 runoff, which the court annulled, leading to Sunday’s revote. But that ruling came amid widespread complaints from foreign monitors that the vote was unfair; this time, monitors have said they didn’t see mass violations.

Yanukovych’s team has yet to file an appeal, and the Central Election Commission’s Davydovych said that many of the complaints they had received, purportedly from individual voters, were “printed on the same computer, with the same text, the same envelopes”.

“This is on the conscience of those who do that,” Davydovych said.

President Leonid Kuchma, in the run-up to Sunday’s vote, urged both candidates to accept the official result and not appeal. And the Council of Europe, the continent’s top human rights watchdog, also called on Yanukovych yesterday to accept defeat.

“I call on all parties to accept the verdict of the ballot box and to refrain from rhetoric which may fuel division in Ukraine,” said Terry Davis, the council’s secretary general.

Ukraine’s east-west divide has deepened during the bitter and protracted election campaign. The Russian-speaking, heavily industrialised east backed Yanukovych, while cosmopolitan Kiev and the nationalistic west supported Yushchenko.

The bitterly-fought campaign also frayed ties between the west and Russia. The Kremlin is nervous about the eastward expanding EU and NATO, and Russian President Vladimir Putin personally campaigned for Yanukovych in the first two rounds of voting in November. He also had congratulated Yanukovych after the fraud-marred second round, ignoring western complaints that the vote was rigged.

Yushchenko, who draws much of his support from nationalist western Ukraine where anti-Russian feeling is high, has aimed to bring this sprawling nation of 48 million closer to the West, without alienating giant neighbour Russia.

Petro Poroshenko, a key Yushchenko ally, said that Yushchenko’s main domestic task will be fighting the corruption that pervades Ukrainian business and society, improving the economy and reconfiguring the tax system to bring an end to Ukraine’s underground economy.

The goal, he said, is for “every citizen of Ukraine to feel that his life is better”.

“In two to three months, each of you must see the difference between new power and the old one,” Poroshenko said.