Even on election day, 'Orange' rebels remain

On Saturday, the Constitutional Court created ripples by ordering local election commissions to provide mobile ballot boxes for any infirm or elderly person who asked to vote at home. Absentee and mobile voting was identified as a major tool of fraud in the last round and severely curbed under new rules passed by parliament two weeks ago. But Yanukovich had protested that the restrictions would disenfranchise millions of his supporters.

Most Kievites appeared to be hoping that Yushchenko would prevail, and that his margin would be big enough to forestall any doubts about its authenticity.

"The worst thing would be if Yushchenko only wins by 3 percent, like Yanukovich did last time," says Rostislav Sali, a Kiev radio journalist. "Then all the Yanukovich supporters will claim that they were cheated and there will be more trouble, more conflict. There has to be a decisive victory."

Yanukovich has warned that he will launch a "storm of legal challenges" if Yushchenko wins, and some of his supporters have threatened to flood into Kiev from their strongholds in eastern Ukraine to hold their own revolution. "We've heard they're coming and we're ready for them," says Tsipino. "We are expecting all kinds of provocations and trouble. This is not over yet."

Tsipino says that a Yushchenko victory must be followed up with sweeping actions to reduce Russian influence in Ukraine, fight the rich "oligarchs" who dominate the economy and reduce poverty. "I want to live in a normal country, where people can live in dignity and each can have the opportunity to fulfill his potential," he says. "Ukraine today is something totally different from that."

The radicals who set up the barricaded tent city in Kiev a month ago received a hero's welcome from much of the local population. Following the Supreme Court decision to call fresh elections earlier this month, most folded their tents and went home. But about 1,000 are still there, many arguing, like Tsipino, that the "Orange Revolution" remains unfinished. But the gifts of food and supplies that sustained them in early days have dried up, and some Kievites are clearly cooling to their presence. "They played their role, but it's about time they went back to their studies and their jobs," says Maya Panasyuk, an accountant. "We need to get back to normal."

Ideas of radical social transformation are all very well, say others, but the "orange revolution" was just about canceling a flawed election and doing it over, properly. "It wasn't a revolution at all, in the literal meaning of the word," says Denis Makarov, a medical student at Kiev's Shevchenko University. "Society just had an allergic reaction to fraud. I hope it's been cured now."

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