KIEV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, apparently narrowly beaten in last week’s presidential vote, ended six days of silence Saturday, saying the vote had been rigged and she would challenge the result in court.
Preliminary results fromthe Feb. 7 ballot gave her rival, opposition leader Viktor Yanukovych, a lead of just 3.5 percentage points.
International observers called the elections free and fair, but no official winner has been declared, and Tymoshenko has refused to concede defeat.
She said Saturday that she had evidence of fraud and would fight the result, forwhich the final count is to be announced Wednesday.
“I have made the only decision I can make - to challenge the results in court,” Tymoshenko said in a fiveminute televised appeal to the public. “Not going to the courts today would mean leaving Ukraine to criminals without a fight.”
She asked Ukrainians to support her legal battle tooverturn the elections, but urged them not to take to the streets in protest as demonstrations would destabilize the country.
“Ukraine now needs stability and calm like never before,” she said.
Her appeal late Saturday appeared to confirm analyst expectations that she is digging in for a standoff with Yanukovych that could delaythe transfer of power.
She said more than 1 million votes had been falsified or miscounted, naming the Russian-speaking Crimean peninsula, a Yanukovych stronghold, as the site of “shocking” irregularities.
She also claimed that several observers from the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe had agreed to support her legalchallenge with “video evidence” in courts.
Officially, however, the organization has declared the elections “professional, transparent and honest” in a joint statement with other international observers.
The monitors’ praise of the election conduct will likely hurt Tymoshenko’s chances of mounting a successful court challenge.
Front Section, Pages 14 on 02/14/2010