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| Kiev: Ukranian President Viktor Yushchenko shakes former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko's hand. Ukraine will hold an early
parliamentary election on Sunday. Mykola Lazarenko/Presidential Press Service/Pool/AP |
Will Sunday's Ukraine vote break political deadlock?
The Orange Revolution parties, mired in infighting, reached an impasse with pro-Russia President Viktor Yanukovich, spurring emergency elections.
from the September 28, 2007 edition
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Last week Ukraine's SBU security service, which is controlled by Yushchenko, accused regional authorities in the eastern region of Kharkov of registering almost 100,000 nonexistent persons on the voter rolls.
Tymoshenko has alleged that recent amendments to election laws introduced by Yanukovich's government could deprive more than 1 million Ukrainians of their right to vote and enable corrupt local authorities to stuff ballot boxes.
"Ukraine is again facing the threat of massive falsification," she warned.
All three big political parties are already pitching tents and positioning supporters on Kiev's central Maidan square – where the Orange Revolution unfolded – in order to launch mass protests if Sunday's results show any suspicious gains for either side.
To avoid such turmoil, Ukraine's nongovernmental groups intend to carry out four separate nationwide exit polls, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has sent 600 election observers to monitor the counting.
Why Orange lost momentum
Many Ukrainians blame Yushchenko for fumbling the opportunity handed to him by the Orange Revolution, which vaulted him into power with a mandate to introduce sweeping market reforms, take Ukraine into NATO and prepare it for eventual membership in the European Union.
Instead, the Orange coalition dissolved as Yushchenko quarrelled with, then fired, Prime Minister Tymoshenko. Parliamentary polls last year brought Yanukovich back as president. Most of the time since has been consumed with infighting between president and parliament.
Though Ukraine's economy boasts an estimated growth rate of 7 percent this year, reforms are on hold pending resolution of the political deadlock. A recent survey by the Kiev-based Institute of Social and Political Psychology found that corruption is rampant, with over half of Ukrainians reporting that they regularly pay bribes to officials to get things done.
"A lot of public money is supposedly directed at fixing up this city's infrastructure, but the results suggest that much of that money just goes missing," says Igor Gulik, editor of the liberal daily Lvivskaya Gazeta in Lvov.
What will new parliament do?
If the Orange and Blue forces are evenly matched, experts say, much will depend on the ability of the fiery Orange populist, Tymoshenko, to cobble together a large enough parliamentary coalition to become prime minister; if not, the pro-Moscow technocrat Yanukovich is likely to return.
Both rivals of Yushchenko, Tymoshenko and Yanukovich are already angling for the main prize: to unseat him when the next presidential polls roll around in 2009. Some experts suggest that it might be better to get that over with sooner.
"I don't see the outcome of these elections solving Ukraine's crisis of power," says Anatoly Romaniuk, a political scientist at Ivan Franko University in Lvov. "If the crisis deepens, it will push Ukraine toward early presidential elections, and that might provide a clear resolution and a way forward."
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