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| Yushchenko: Our Ukraine - We will lead our people to a legitimate victory. |
| 2004-12-03 |
| Article from WSJ will be available tomorrow w.o registration. BY VIKTOR YUSHCHENKO KIEV--For months, Ukraine's democratic forces warned officials in Kiev and other European capitals that our autumn presidential election would be neither free nor fair. Two of the main reasons for this conclusion were the incumbent government's unprecedented interference in the pre-election campaign and its censorship of the mass media. During the first election round on Oct. 31, regional governors colluded with police and other state officials to stuff ballot boxes, falsify vote counts and intimidate election commissions. Ukraine's central and territorial election commissions turned a blind eye and overlooked our well-documented official complaints. In the end, despite massive falsifications by my opponent, the central election commission was forced to concede that I won the first round of voting. During the Nov. 21 runoff vote, polling stations in the eastern regions remained open two hours after they were supposed to close officially. Some reported voter turnout exceeding 100%, while in other regions up to 35% of the ballots cast were from people's homes. Election observers were prevented from monitoring voting and counting procedures at thousands of polling stations, as permitted by Ukrainian law. Thousands of poll watchers from democratic parties together with average citizens witnessed traveling thugs with police escorts harassing election commissioners, destroying polling stations, stuffing ballots, abusing absentee voter certificates and switching commission protocols, to name just a few of the 11,000 violations officially filed by us in the courts. We are now patiently awaiting the Supreme Court's review of these complaints in the hope that justice will prevail. |
| Posted by:ed |