[Truth666]

Lugner calling Kuschma to cancel the election - Kuschma has two alternatives : follow in the footsteps of Yeltsin of October 1999 or follow these calls.
The two immediate questions :
Will this march end like the Belgrade did ?
What will Kuschma do ?

[Truth666]

Place your bets. After all it's the end game.

[OXENinFLA]

Tue Nov 23, 6:48 AM ET
Supporters of Ukraine's opposition presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko take part in a rally in Kiev's main Independence Square, November 23, 2004. Ukrainian opposition chief Yushchenko told tens of thousands of protesters in a Kiev square on Tuesday to march to parliament, where an emergency session on a disputed presidential election was to begin shortly. REUTERS/Mykola Lazarenko
Mon Nov 22, 9:06 PM ET
Supporters of Ukraine's opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko rally in downtown Lviv, western Ukraine. (AP/Sergei Grits)
Mon Nov 22, 7:39 PM ET
Supporters of opposition presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko shout slogans for their leader during a protest rally in Kiev(AFP/Viktor Drachev)
Mon Nov 22, 4:43 PM ET
Ukraine's opposition presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko addresses supporters during a rally on Kiev's main thoroughfare and Independence Square, November 22, 2004. Ukraine's prime minister was on the verge of victory in a bitterly-fought presidential election that U.S. and Western monitors denounced for not meeting democratic standards. Photo by Pool/Reuters REUTERS/Anatoly Medzyk/Pool
Tue Nov 23, 5:43 AM ET
Hundreds of tents and thousands of demonstrators are seen in the main street of the Ukrainian capital Kiev, Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2004. Hundreds of thousands of people gathered on Tuesday in downtown Kiev to protest alleged fraud in the presidential elections and to support opposition presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Tue Nov 23, 6:51 AM ET
A supporter of opposition presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko protect himself from the cold in a temporary campsite in Kiev. Thousands of opposition supporters spent the night sleeping in tents as they continued to protest against the presidential runoff vote which has polarised views in the Ukraine.(AFP/Mladen Antonov)

[nw_arizona_granny]

Ping

[dr_who_2]

Are they having trouble hiding the fact that they're losing the vote?

[Agog]

Below is an interesting article regarding the various forms of fraud perpetrated by the communist Yanukovich to steal the Ukainian election. It's amazing that on Free Republic, of all places, people seem to believe it's a good thing that that Putin's goal of reconstructing the Soviet Union seems to be gaining momentum. I never expected to see members of this forum to be promoting such goals.


MOSCOW TIMES

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

Observers See 'Dead Souls' and Other Fraud

By Anatoly Medetsky and Simon Saradzhyan
Staff Writers KIEV -- Turnout at many polling stations was implausibly high. Absentee ballots were cast multiple times. Disappearing ink made ballots invalid.

These are a few of the hundreds of violations reported by voters and independent observers at Ukraine's runoff election, which Western and local observers denounced Monday as fraught with fraud and abuse.

"It is now apparent that there was a concerted and forceful program of election day fraud and abuse enacted with the leadership or cooperation of authorities," said Richard Lugar, a senior U.S. senator who was sent by President George W. Bush to monitor the vote.

The U.S. State Department late Monday called on the Ukrainian government to investigate allegations of fraud or risk a changed relationship with the United States, The Associated Press reported.

Observers from a mission representing the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Council of Europe, the European Parliament and NATO said the Ukrainian government had done nothing to act on recommendations made after the first round on Oct. 31.

"With an even heavier heart than three weeks ago, I have to repeat the message from the first round: This election did not meet a considerable number of international standards for democratic elections," mission head Bruce George told reporters in Kiev.

"The deficiencies have not been addressed. The abuse of state resources in favor of the prime minister continued, as well as an overwhelming media bias in his favor," he said.

The European Union's 25 foreign ministers summoned Ukrainian ambassadors to national capitals to protest the way the vote was handled.

Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Bot, whose country holds the EU presidency, said the ministers also agreed to send a statement of protest to Ukraine's parliament and outgoing President Leonid Kuchma but that the EU would confer with observers before deciding on any further punitive measures.

In contrast, Vladimir Rushailo, who headed the Russian observer mission, declared the voting "transparent, legitimate and free," Interfax reported.

Voter turnout exceeded 100 percent at many polling stations in the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk that voted predominantly for Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych in the first round, opposition challenger Viktor Yushchenko said.

"In the Donetsk region, turnout at every third polling station was more than 100 percent," Yushchenko told a rally in Kiev.

Both regions, which are led by pro-Yanukovych governors, are located in eastern Ukraine, where Yanukovych has strong public support.

The Central Elections Commission's own reports raised doubts about their plausibility. For example, turnout in the Donetsk region, where Yanukovych is from and where he once served as governor, was put at 96.23 percent.

Yushchenko said the official results from several polling stations in Donetsk and Luhansk showed that up to 99 percent of voters picked Yanukovych.

The Central Elections Commission said late Monday that Yanukovych received 96.20 percent of the vote in Donetsk and 92.72 percent in Luhansk.

In Luhansk, Yanukovych's supporters kept close track of voter turnout throughout the day Sunday and went to the apartments of those who had not voted to encourage them to do so, said Yevgeny Bairamov, an observer with the nongovernmental Committee of Voters of Ukraine.

"There was no doubt that Yanukovych is the winner in Luhansk, but the turnout figures are completely unrealistic," he said.

Bairamov said that all 12 of the region's district election committees were supposed to work Monday to accept complaints about violations but closed early in the morning after counting votes.

Reporters and observers were denied access to many polling stations in the pro-Yanukovych regions.

The Central Elections Commission's announcement last week that that the number of registered voters shot up by 750, 000 to a total of 37.6 million shows the scale of the vote-rigging, said Andrei Duda of the Union of Ukrainian Voters, a nongovernmental organization that monitored the election.

The commission revised the number after correcting lists of voters from the first round in this nation of 47.4 million.

Duda said that most of these additional voters were "dead souls," whose names were used on multiple absentee ballots and added as many as 2 million votes to the final vote count.

He said he suspects authorities also inflated voter rolls by leaving names with incorrect spellings on them after voters whose names were wrong had them corrected.

Yushchenko said five times more absentee ballots than in the first round were distributed across the country.

Local observers reported a number of cases of voters casting absentee ballots at multiple polling stations. In one example, Duda's organization said it saw 12 young men riding in a yellow minivan from one polling station to the next in the city of Uzhgorod in the Zakarpatsky region. It said the van was accompanied by a police patrol car.

Yushchenko accused election officials of trying to stuff ballot boxes in the Nikolayevsk region, saying a third of voters there cast ballots in boxes that were specially delivered to their homes -- a right usually reserved for ill or elderly people.

Yushchenko urged the authorities to cancel voting results at polling stations where violations were reported.

The Central Elections Commission said Monday that it had not received any complaints about the vote count, while the police said they had registered only 37 election-related offenses.

Yushchenko's campaign headquarters said it has documented more than 2,000 violations, while Yanukovych's supporters told Interfax that they have counted about 750 violations.

In addition to the outright vote-rigging, observers reported illegal campaigning on election day. Parishioners of the St. Michael Cathedral in the city of Cherkassy, for instance, were handed icons with pro-Yanukovych leaflets attached to the back, the Union of Ukrainian Voters said on its web site.

Also in Cherkassy, an unidentified person dumped ink into a ballot box at a polling stations.

An election official at a polling station in Kiev, where Yushchenko won a majority of the votes in the first round, used disappearing ink on ballots, Ukrainian news web site Korrespondent.net reported. Vyacheslav Pinkovsky, who represented Yanukovych's team on the polling station's election board, wrote the names of voters on ballots and then handed them over, it said. Once the names disappeared, the ballots were invalid and had to be tossed.

Pens with disappearing ink were also discovered at several polling stations in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, where Yushchenko also has strong support, Ukrainian media reported.

Saradzhyan reported from Moscow, and Staff Writer Oksana Yablokova contributed to this report from Moscow.

[Rebelbase]

And the libs here are all whining about how "divided " we are as a nation.

No matter how close an election or vast the differences of opinion, we've seen nothing like what goes on in other countries.

[AdmSmith]

I just got news from Kiev, Yushchenko with his hand on the Bible declared himself President of Ukraine in the parliament. It seems that there will be an open conflict.

[Grzegorz 246]

[jb6]

WITH 65 PERCENT OF BALLOTS, CAST AT POLLING STATIONS ABROAD, COUNTED, AS OF 9 A M MONDAY, VIKTOR YUSCHENKO LEADING WITH 52.8 PERCENT

KYIV, November 1 /Ukrinform/. According to Chairman of the Central Electoral Commission Sergei Kivalov, as of 9 a m Monday, November 1, 65 percent of ballots, last by Ukrainian voters at polling stations abroad, were counted. As Mr Kivalov said, Viktor Yuschenko collected 52.8 percent of the votes versus Viktor Yanukovych's 37.87 percent. According to Foreign Ministry press secretary Markian Lubkivsky, in Belgium and Luxembourg 359 Ukrainian citizens participated in the election, or 43 percent of the total number of registered eligible voters (886 persons). Viktor Yuschenko mustered 75 percent of the votes versus Viktor Yanukovych's 20.9 percent. In Sweden Ukrainian voters cast 66.4 percent of the ballots in favor of Viktor Yuschenko. Yanukovych scored 41.9 percent.

In Stockholm, only 18 percent of the registered Ukrainian voters came to the Embassy's polling station. According to the observers, many were prevented from exercising their constitutional right by the incorrect lists of voters.

The list contained 714 names. One hundred and thirty one voters came to the polling station in Stockholm, of whom 87 cast their ballots in support of Viktor Yuschenko and 32 in support of Viktor Yanukovych. Ukrainian nationals in Serbia and Montenegro came to vote at the Ukrainian Embassy's polling station in Belgrade. The list comprised about 400 voters, of whom 137 citizens participated in the election. In Kosovo all the 251 Ukrainian military servicemen and 225 police officers cast ballots. In Russia's second biggest city and once capital, St Petersburg the bulk of those who participated in the voting supported Viktor Yanukovych (493 ballots out of the total number of 634 ballots cast). Viktor Yuschenko collected 86 ballots. The other 22 candidates' scores were computable in one-digit figures at best, and some failed to collect any votes in their support.

About a thousand Ukrainian citizens went to vote in New York City, about 2,250 voted in Washington, DC, Chicago, Illinois and San Francisco, California. Over 1,600 Ukrainian voters were registered in London, UK, of whom 877 participated in the October 31 election. The bulk of them (788) cast ballots in support of Viktor Yuschenko, Viktor Yanukovych scored 41 ballots. Serhi Komisarenko, who once was Ukraine's Ambassador to Britain, collected nine votes. According to unofficial data, there are several dozens of thousands of Ukrainian nationals in Britain, but only a fraction were entered in the list of voters. According to the Ukrainian Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa, 70 percent of the registered Ukrainian voters, who basically reside in the Ganteng Province, came to the Embassy's polling station to cast ballots on October 31.

[jb6]

News from Ukraine All the important news

since 26 August 2000

Natalya Krasnoboka

Fighting corruption

In comparison with neighboring Russia, Ukraine has had a relatively quite summer. The break from political life has been interrupted only once by the arrest of Olexandr Tymoshenko, a member of the board of the United Energy Systems of Ukraine Corporation. The arrest of this businessman is not seen as an extraordinary event in modern Ukrainian life.

However, Tymoshenko is not only a businessman but also the husband of Yuliya Tymoshenko, vice prime minister of the current Cabinet. It is difficult to give a prove whether the arrest of Olexandr Tymoshenko is in any way connected with his wife's job.

Together with Valery Falkovych, first deputy general director of the corporation, Tymoshenko is officially accused of embezzling USD 800 000 in public funds through the export of rolled metal to Asia during the 1990s.

On her part, Yulia Tymoshenko blames her political rivals for the action taken against her husband. She sees the fear and anger of her opponents, because of her constant desire and efforts to stop corruption in Ukraine's energy sector, as the main reason behind his arrest.

The story took on a new course on Friday when Deputy Chief Prosecutor Mykola Obykhod accused the corporation of illegally transferring more than USD 1.1 billion abroad. More fuel was added to the fire by the release of information that up to USD 100 million was sent to the accounts of former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, who is still waiting for the final verdict from the American and Swiss courts on the matter of corruption during his time in the Cabinet of Ministers.

This information not only etablishes clear links between Olexandr Tymoshenko and the disgraced ex-Prime Minister, but between Lazarenko and Yulia Tymoshenko as well. At the time of the illegal transactions mentioned by the prosecutor, Yulia Tymoshenko was head of the United Energy Systems of Ukraine Corporation.

Further developments are expected to follow soon. From now on, it is difficult to draw any conclusions or take information presented by the prosecutors for granted.

Only one thing is clear: Yulia Tymoshenko, who will possibly be supported by Prime Minister Yuschenko, some other members of the Cabinet and her own political party Batkivschyna (Fatherland), is not going to give up on her husband's arrest nor with the accusations against herself.

[Truth666]

Lugner calling Kuschma to cancel the election - Kuschma has two alternatives : follow in the footsteps of Yeltsin of October 1999 or follow these calls. The two immediate questions : Will this march end like the Belgrade did ? What will Kuschma do ?
Kuchma declared himself ready to transfer his powers to Yushchenko in the morning, Yulia Tymoshenko claims
http://maidan.org.ua/static/enews/1101252011.html
If NATO's mouthpiece Yulia Tymoshenko for one time is not lying then Kuschma refused to follow the footsteps of Yelstsin.

[DTA]

>>>>>>Will this march end like the Belgrade did ?<<<<

Belgrade protest was prearanged with security apparatus before protesters even gathered. Also, NATO and VJ reached an agreement two days earlier in clandestine meeting in Bosnia. Street riot was merely for the show - secret services, financial oligarchs and mafia were on the side of Belgrade protesters. This is not the case in Kyiv.

I am worried that Ukraine may enter into the state of chaos.

We should pray for peaceful resolution of the crisis.