KIEV, 25 November 2004 — Ukraine opposition leader Viktor Yuschenko yesterday refused to concede a bitterly disputed presidential vote and called for a general strike after election officials declared his pro-Russia rival the winner of the poll.
“The illegal decision of the election commission has placed Ukraine on the verge of civil conflict,” Yuschenko told tens of thousands of opposition supporters massed on Kiev’s central Independence Square.
“The committee of national salvation announces a political strike in the whole of Ukraine,” he said to roaring cheers from the crowd.
“We are going to look for a solution in an open battle. The government wants an escalation of the conflict, it has rejected political dialogue,” he said.
His ally Yulia Timoshenko said the opposition would ask the nation’s high court to annul the election commission results.
“First of all, tomorrow we will lodge a serious and well-argumented appeal with the Supreme Court,” she said.
Yuschenko contends that the government helped rig Sunday’s presidential election in favor of his opponent, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, and said the election commission’s announcement amounted to a “state coup d’etat.”
He spoke a few hours after the election commission said that with ballots from all polling stations counted, Yanukovich received 49.46 percent of the vote, compared to 46.61 percent for Yuschenko, a difference of nearly one million votes.
Yanukovich supporters insist their candidate won fairly. “Everything happened in absolute conformity with the laws of political logic,” Stepan Havrish, the prime minister’s representative on the commission, said after the announcement. “He won absolutely fairly.” Timoshenko vowed that the opposition would block the country’s roads, airports and railways.
“We will plan in detail and use all actions necessary to block the railways, airports, to block all the roads,” she said.
“We are not going to let them calmly destroy Ukraine,” she said.
Ukraine’s election has split the country in two, with the nationalist Ukrainian-speaking west supporting Yuschenko and the industrialized Russian-speaking east backing Yanukovich.
It has also exposed a Cold War-like rift between Russia, which backs Yanukovich and says the election was fair, and much of the West, which has said it was riddled with fraud.
In Washington, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said it could not accept the result as “legitimate” as the vote had not met international standards and there had been no investigation of widespread reports of fraud and abuse.
Echoing calls earlier by European leaders, he demanded a “full review” of the way the election was held and how the votes were counted.
Powell, who earlier spoke to Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma and warned against any resort to violence, said there was still time to reach a peaceful resolution.
With security forces guarding his presidency, Kuchma — who had hand-picked Yanukovich as his successor — ruled out the use of force. “As acting president, I categorically reject the use of any kind of force,” Interfax quoted him as saying.
Concern mounted in Western Europe, with the European Union saying the poll was marred by “massive fraud” and urging a delay in the final election results pending a review. The Dutch EU presidency and Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, whose country borders Ukraine, both said they were sending special envoys to Kiev in view of the situation.
Yanukovich offered his rival talks to settle the issue and said negotiations would begin today with Yuschenko’s team, but it was not clear if the two leaders themselves would meet. “Tomorrow we will begin negotiations with Yuschenko’s team, we will try to find a common language,” the Interfax news agency quoted him as saying.
“I would like to listen to their offers,” he said, adding that he would not “like them (the opposition) to feel cheated.”
Yuschenko’s team had already Tuesday refused talks, saying the government should first admit it had rigged the vote.
