Ukraine vote count shows win for Yanukovych
KIEV, Ukraine — Opposition candidate Viktor Yanukovych has narrowly defeated Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko in Ukraine’s bitterly fought presidential race, a preliminary vote count showed Wednesday.
The Central Elections Commission took three days to count the ballots from Sunday’s runoff vote, announcing that the pro-Russia Yanukovych garnered 48.95 percent of the ballots to Tymoshenko’s 45.47 percent.
Four percent voted against both candidates, while 1.2 percent of the ballots were spoiled, the initial count showed. Voter turnout was high, about 69 percent. Official results were to be announced by Feb. 17.
Tymoshenko’s supporters have said she plans to legally challenge the result.
Unlike past elections in Ukraine, this vote was praised by international monitors as being free and fair. The U.S. Embassy hailed it as “another step in the consolidation of Ukraine’s democracy.”
Tymoshenko was the heroine of the Orange pro-democracy protests that erupted after Yanukovych was declared the winner of the 2004 presidential election. That vote was thrown out by the court due to massive fraud, and Yanukovych lost a revote to President Viktor Yushchenko.
But Tymoshenko and Yushchenko, both Orange allies, soon grew estranged and the bad blood between them caused political gridlock and deepened Ukraine’s economic malaise. Yushchenko did not even get enough votes in the first round of the 2010 presidential election to get into the runoff vote.
Tymoshenko, who usually seeks the limelight, has made no public appearances since Sunday as she considers her next step. Yanukovych has urged her to concede, and his followers have camped out by the national election headquarters in central Kiev since Monday to make sure she does not call for mass protests.
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