Prime Minister Victor Yanukovich got 3 per cent ahead of his rival and namesake, opposition leader Victor Yuschenko, announced the Central Election Commission. The winner has had a routine workday, say officials close to him. As he was making a televised address to the nation, yesterday, Mr. Yanukovich called the opposition to get to the negotiations table. His rival's voters will have their vision of Ukraine's future reckoned with, he reassured.
Meanwhile, Victor Yuschenko brought the situation to an end in an ostentatious move-on his own initiative, he took a presidential oath of allegiance to the nation from the parliamentary rostrum this afternoon.
Both rivals' supporters have bad doubts as to which of the Victors is actual victor. Be that as it may, the conflict will, to all appearances, come to settlement at the negotiating table, expects Alexei Makarkin, prominent Russian expert on political technologies. Either side will hardly venture on a fratricidal clash-both are sure to keep as much aloof as possible to the dire prospect.
Ukraine has an extremely small chance to re-enact the Rose Revolution, in which the Georgian opposition overtook power a year ago, sharp. The Ukrainian economy is far stronger than the Georgian, and state machinery much smoother. The chance for a split is more tangible in Ukraine. That is just what its sober-minded political activists seek to avoid.
However, there are US and West European stances, which threaten to rock the Ukrainian boat even stronger. Thus, Senator Richard Lugar, US presidential envoy to the Ukrainian poll, thinks Ukrainians ought to act tough for actual election returns to be eventually announced. He hopes that will come quite soon-within several days. This is not the time to wait but the time to act, he emphatically remarked.
The European Union has also made public its consolidated stance on the election-the EU does not recognise its returns.
The opposition may take these and similar pronouncements as a transparent hint that the West has nothing against violent confrontation in Ukraine. There are many hotheads in the opposition camp even without such statements. Yulia Timoshenko, for one, has called the community to take the presidential staff premises by storm.
The alarming developments in Ukraine get us Russians thinking hard just what awaits our country in its nearest presidential election, of 2008.
Ukraine was expected to demonstrate a democratic pattern of presidential succession, as was the case after its latest election. No one came out against the presence of political consultants from Russia and other countries. Their total number was roughly evaluated at a spectacular four hundred.
Ukraine took into consideration a recent referendum in which the neighbouring Belarus came up for incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko's term prolonged. Ukraine viewed it as an extremely undesirable and utterly non-democratic option.
Now, statements on election returns unrecognised coming from other countries are quite close to intervention in Ukrainian domestic affairs. Opposition activists are causing public disorder as they demand coming into office. All that makes the Ukrainian pattern of presidential succession something Russia would not accept. At any rate, current suspense in Kiev is sure to teach Russia a lesson.
