[ RADIO FREE EUROPE/ RADIO LIBERTY ]

[ rfe/rl banner ]

Ukrainian Court Rejects Early Vote Challenges

30 December 2004 -- Ukraine's Supreme Court today rejected two legal challenges brought by Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych aiming to invalidate the presidential runoff won by his opponent, Viktor Yushchenko, further dimming his hopes of staving off a landmark change in the country's political leadership.

The court refused to review complaints alleging that the Central Election Committee failed to enforce voting law and failed to ensure that all disabled voters received home-voting rights.

The court had rejected another Yanukovych challenge to the vote result announced yesterday.

It continues to review a fourth and final complaint from the Yanukovych camp.

Electoral authorities are also reviewing complaints from Yanukovych seeking to nullify the 26 December repeat runoff, although the eight-point margin of defeat suggests that is unlikely.

Allies of opposition leader Yushchenko said today they are confident that their side will win any legal challenges.

Meanwhile, Yushchenko suggested that he would support Yuliya Tymoshchenko to be Ukraine's prime minister once he is president.

Tymoshchenko yesterday foreshadowed a new political order in Ukraine: "When we come to power, opposition members will not be jailed or exiled as they were under [outgoing President Leonid] Kuchma," Tymoshenko said. "And their heads will not be cut off, as happened to [slain journalist Heorhiy] Gongadze, and journalists will not be beaten in their own homes, because we are coming to power with a completely different heart and a different mind. And I think you will be able to see and understand that."

Yushchenko has pledged that his new government will work to deepen Ukraine's cooperation with both the European Union and Russia.

(dpa/Reuters)

NEWSLETTER

Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list

Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

Ukrainian Court Rejects Early Vote Challenges