2004: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

Ukraine's election begets the Orange Revolution

Easily the most significant of elections since the country gained its independence 13 years ago, was the battle between two presidential candidates to take the reins of power and lead the nation of some 48 million people either toward Europe or closer to Moscow.

An initial round of voting on October 31 weeded an initial field of 26 candidates down to two, who fought each other in a bitter run-off election on November 21 and a rerun of that election on December 26. Opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko's camp alleged widespread falsifications and vote rigging that initially gave the election to pro-presidential candidate and Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych.

Millions of Ukrainians took to the streets and effectively stopped Mr. Yanukovych's inauguration in a show of non-violent grass roots strength. What ensued became known as the "Orange Revolution," and made headlines throughout the world. In the end, overcoming a campaign fraught with fraud, assassination attempts and allegations of Russian involvement in helping to rig the election, former prime minister and National Bank of Ukraine Chairman Yushchenko won the last of three votes on December 26 and ended a campaign that will be remembered as a pivotal moment in Ukraine's history.

Throughout the battle between Messrs. Yanukovych and Yushchenko, Ukraine's Central Election Commission, the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court often became the stage on which the more critical points of the election were played out.

Effectively, the race began the previous year, when the Constitutional Court ruled on December 30, 2003, that outgoing President Leonid Kuchma could run for a third term in office even though the Constitution of Ukraine limits a state leader to two terms. The 18 members of Ukraine's highest constitutional authority decided that Mr. Kuchma, who was first elected in 1994, had the exclusive right to an additional term because he was elected prior to approval of the Constitution in 1996.

The decision in part read: "One must understand that the provision applies only to people who are elected to the post of president of Ukraine after the 1996 Constitution came into force." Justice Vasyl Nimchenko said that with the enactment of the Constitution in 1996 President Kuchma became an acting president fulfilling his authority as state leader under the terms of the old Constitution. Therefore the time from 1996-1999 cannot be considered a full term in office under the new Constitution.

National Deputy Ihor Ostash, a member of the Our Ukraine political bloc, called the court's decision proof that the 18 judges were merely the president's stooges.

While the court was ironing out Mr. Kuchma's status as a candidate for the election, the two top candidates for the post clashed in Kyiv on February 21 in what seemed to have been the first debate - though unofficial - of the presidential election season. After delivering a series of stinging criticisms of Mr. Yushchenko, but before a debate could begin, Mr. Yanukovych left the hall where he had just completed his address to an international conference. Mr. Yanukovych did not hear Mr. Yushchenko's rebuttal. In his remarks, Mr. Yushchenko questioned the current government's initiative on the Single Economic Space with Russia, Belarus and Kazakstan, and its halting steps towards European integration.

Mr. Yushchenko questioned the way the majority coalition in Parliament, which staunchly supports the prime minister, had pursued political reform. He charged that the majority had illegally rammed through the first reading of a draft bill on amending the Constitution, while ignoring parliamentary procedures on floor debate and voting.

The current Ukrainian prime minister stated that the parliamentary elections of 2002 had laid the groundwork for the improved economic situation in the country. He also blamed European political leaders for getting in the way, and warned that the current political opposition has neither a vision nor a plan for Ukraine, only a desire to assume power. He asserted that the opposition did not want to see an economically powerful and politically viable country.

With the campaign beginning the Verkhovna Rada on February 17 and 19 approved 12 new members of the Central Election Commission (CEC), thus bringing it to its full strength of 15 people. At that point, it was announced that the CEC comprised 11 members delegated by pro-government forces, two by the Communist Party, and one each by the Socialist Party and Our Ukraine.

On February 19, the 15 CEC members unanimously elected National Deputy Serhii Kivalov as CEC chairman. Mr. Kivalov, 49. In order to chair the CEC Mr. Kivalov gave up his parliamentary mandate. However, before that he was a lawmaker and simultaneously chaired the High Council of Justice (a body distributing jobs among Ukrainian judges) and presided over the Odesa National Law Academy. He managed to persuade his colleagues in the Verkhovna Rada that he did not violate the law on the status of deputies by holding several positions because, he argued, he worked in the High Council of Justice and the Odesa National Law Academy on a non-salaried basis.

In between the two days that the Verkhovna Rada was approving new CEC members, political parties and factions that comprised the majority there signed a political agreement on February 18 to support a single candidate in the October 31 presidential election. The 13 leaders, including Prime Minister Yanukovych, who also headed the Party of Regions, agreed to form a coalition for both the October presidential election and the parliamentary elections in 2006. They also pledged to continue to support passage of a controversial law on political reform that would amend the Constitution of Ukraine. Four oppositionist political groupings within the Verkhovna Rada, the Socialist, Communist, Tymoshenko and Our Ukraine factions did not sign the document.

A month later, on March 19 Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada overwhelmingly passed a new law on presidential elections, changing the duration of the campaign and the manner in which candidates qualify for the vote. The legislation, a compromise bill pieced together from three different drafts, received the approval of 400 lawmakers. The bill came to a vote after representatives from the various factions, led by Our Ukraine National Deputy Yurii Kliuchkovskyi, hammered out a version acceptable to all.

The new law reduced the allowable days for campaigning prior to the October 31 vote from 180 days to 120, a two-month reduction. It also required candidates to file fewer signature petitions, but mandated the posting of a bond of 500,000 hrv ($943,000), which was implemented to ensure that individuals who registered as candidates were serious-minded in their intentions. The new rule also required that the potential candidate gather 500,000 signatures in order to have his or her name printed on the election ballot. The petition would need to include a minimum of 20,000 signatures from each of two-thirds (18) of Ukraine's 27 political regions (25 oblasts plus the cities of Kyiv and Sevastopol). The new legislation limited the budgets of registered candidates to 10.25 million hrv (less than $2 million U.S.). It further stipulated that only the country's Supreme Court could disqualify a candidate from the election after he or she was registered and only based on a petition filed by the Central Election Commission.

The Committee of Ukrainian Voters (CUV), a non-partisan civic organization recognized as one of the best election monitoring groups in Ukraine, also voiced a concern: that the law had not included any mention of the rights and responsibilities of monitors from Ukrainian civic organizations. In a press release issued on March 22, the CUV noted that earlier election laws had included such stipulations. "We remind all that the participation of these types of monitors is an indivisible part of democratic elections, which is fixed in the 'Declaration of the Copenhagen Conference' from 1990," read a statement issued by the CUV.

The following month, leaders of the majority coalition of the Ukrainian Parliament and its member political parties voted unanimously on April 14 to support Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych as their candidate for president. The agreement was announced after a closed-door session attended by President Leonid Kuchma. Later Mr. Yanukovych, who was appointed to head the Ukrainian government by President Kuchma, said the two major planks of his platform would be continued economic development and a renewed effort toward political reform.

Nobody among Ukraine's political elite immediately expressed any surprise or reservation regarding the probable candidacy of Mr. Yanukovych, which had long been considered a fait accompli. Petro Symonenko, chairman of the Communist Party of Ukraine, noted that the choice of Mr. Yanukovych came only after extensive internal debate and haggling among other potential candidates and what some political experts said was a dire effort - in the end fruitless - by President Kuchma to identify a better candidate. Mr. Symonenko added that the prime minister had won in a struggle between the political clans of Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk and Kyiv over who should be their single candidate.

As the election campaign continued to heat up, a sign of what the October presidential election would bring played out in the town of Mukachiv on April 18. Nearly 34,000 citizens cast their ballots that day for the mayor of Mukachiv. According to many local and international observers, the election came nowhere close to being democratic, nor did those who were responsible try to feign the slightest air of fairness.

The fiercely contested vote, which was actually a second attempt at electing a mayor for Mukachiv after the first vote was declared invalid, had two main candidates: Victor Baloha, a Verkhovna Rada lawmaker from the Our Ukraine political bloc, and Ernest Nuser, who was backed by the Social Democratic Party-United (SDPU). When the polling stations closed, many Our Ukraine deputies, fearing ballot fraud, collected copies of the protocols upon which the results of the ballot count were registered. The Our Ukraine national deputies calculated that Mr. Baloha had received 19,385 votes - 6,597 more than Mr. Nuser, who had received 13,898. Early in the morning of April 19, the Territorial Election Commission announced otherwise. It declared that Mr. Nuser had won the election by more than 5,000 votes.

Our Ukraine members considered the announcement the last straw after a day of dirty politics. The three opposition factions in the Verkhovna Rada announced during the beginning of the April 20 session that they wanted a vote on their resolution to dismiss the state officials whom they considered responsible for the Mukachiv events: the head of the presidential administration, Victor Medvedchuk, Minister of Internal Affairs Mykola Bilokon and Chairman of the Zakarpattia Oblast Administration Ivan Rizak. The motion, which sought to hold those believed to be responsible for the fraudulent vote, fell short by six votes of the necessary 226 needed to pass.

Besides the copies of the registered election results, Our Ukraine members cited the results of an exit poll conducted by a consortium of polling organizations organized by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation. Within 45 minutes after the polls closed, Ilko Kucheriv, the foundation's director, announced the exit poll results. According to the exit poll, Our Ukraine candidate Mr. Baloha received 62.4 percent of the vote, while SDPU-backed candidate Mr. Nuser received 29.99 percent of the vote. The other six candidates vying for the mayor's post all received less than 1 percent of the vote, according to the poll.

Throughout the day a number of observers, including National Deputies Roman Bezsmertnyi, Yevhen Zhotniak, Taras Stetskiv, Yuri Pavlenko, Petro Oliinyk and Mykola Polischuk, were beaten or roughly manhandled at a number of different polling stations.

Mr. Nuser, the newly elected mayor of Mukachiv, tendered his resignation at a City Council meeting on the evening of May 28. Citing personal threats against both himself and his family as the reason for his resignation, Mr. Nuser stated that it was not an easy decision to make, and added, "I do not have the moral or human right to risk the lives of my family and those close to me, as well as the lives or health of my companions-in-arms. Therefore, I took this decision, albeit not a simple one, but it was the only proper decision to make given the current situation."

With the Mukachiv election behind them, a number of Ukrainian organizations began to unite behind the candidacy of Viktor Yushchenko.

Acting together on June 16, the leaders of two nationalist organizations, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists led by Mykola Plaviuk and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (Revolutionary) headed by Andriy Haydamakha, and two political parties, the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists (CUN) and the All-Ukrainian Union Svoboda, led, respectively, by Oleksii Ivchenko and Oleh Tiahnybok, publicly announced that the process of uniting had begun. The consolidation process had started on May 28, when the four leaders signed a declaration under the title "Unity - A Guarantee for Victory!" Their declaration read: "Ukrainian nationalists are convinced that the only real candidate who can win from the national-patriotic camp is Viktor Yushchenko."

Nearly 50,000 people listened on July 4 as Mr. Yushchenko announced his candidacy for the presidency of Ukraine from a hillside overlooking the Pecherska Lavra (Monastery of the Caves), as his supporters waved thousands of orange pennants imprinted with the single word, "Tak" (Yes). The banners they stood beneath, identifying them as hailing from points all across the country - from Donetsk and Luhansk to Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk - was evidence to some, as the newspaper Ukraina Moloda stated, that while the former prime minister's strength is in the western part of the country, he could count on voter support in the east as well.

The previous day Mr. Yushchenko, along with Prime Minister Yanukovych and Socialist Party leader Oleksander Moroz, took advantage of the beginning of the registration process for candidates in the October 31 presidential election and submitted his registration papers.

Within several days various political congresses and conventions had placed five other names in nomination, including the Communist Party, which announced that party chief Petro Symonenko was its choice for president; the Progressive Socialist Party, which picked its leader, Natalia Vitrenko; the Yedyna Rodyna political association, which threw the name of its head, Oleksander Rzhavskyi, into the ring; the Slavic Party, whose choice was its leader, Oleksander Bazyliuk; and the Liberal-Democratic Party, which nominated Ihor Dushyn, its chairman.

While Mr. Yushchenko used a traditional "grand opening" approach to herald the beginning of his campaign, Mr. Yanukovych decided on a much more subdued, business-like approach. However, he did have the media at his heels to get his message out in several public appearances - an opportunity not available to Mr. Yushchenko, as there was a virtual blackout of his image on most national television networks. In fact, three of the six networks showed only brief footage of Mr. Yushchenko's campaign launch. None cared to note the size of the crowd, much less show the huge audience that had gathered to hear him speak. In stark contrast, on July 7 in various television news broadcasts, Mr. Yanukovych said he would not so much run a campaign as simply continue his work as prime minister, which he said would be "the best way to show the Ukrainian people what to expect with me as president."

On July 2, the day before the start of the campaign season, Mr. Yushchenko signed an election coalition agreement with Ms. Tymoshenko, leader of the eponymous rightist-oriented political bloc, to form the Syla Narodu (Power of the People) political coalition.

Mr. Yushchenko then introduced his political platform on July 9, promising a paradigm shift in economic, political and social policy should he be elected president. Mr. Yushchenko's political platform was divided into 10 parts, which covered nearly every aspect of political, economic and social life in Ukraine. Among the promises he made, Mr. Yushchenko gave notice to rich businessmen that political and legal loopholes would be closed, forcing them to take on a much broader share of the country's tax burden, which he indicated would greatly increase government revenues and allow him as president to fund more social programs.

The day after the publication of Mr. Yushchenko's political platform on July 9, his closest competitor in the race for the presidency, Mr. Yanukovych, was quick to enumerate his own list of promises to be implemented should he win the post. During a stop in Mariupol in his home oblast of Donetsk, Mr. Yanukovych promised to raise farm sector profitability to 40 percent. He said he would institute policies that would at least double the average wage from where it stood. He also said he would reduce the value-added tax (VAT) from 20 percent to 12 percent. In addition, Mr. Yanukovych said he would simplify the tax administration and make it more transparent. He also said he expected to develop the financial and banking sectors, which would result in more financial and investment innovation.

As the campaigns of the top two candidates continued, ten minutes before the September 20 filing deadline was to pass, three additional candidates submitted the required 500,000 petition signatures. The three, Mykhailo Brodskyi, Mykola Rohozhynskyi and Mykola Hrabar, joined Serhii Komisarenko and Natalia Vitrenko, who also submitted their petitions on the final day, to bring to 25 the number of candidates for the post of president. Three days later the number was reduced to 24 when Vitalii Kononov withdrew from the race.

Seven other candidates filed their petitions early and had them approved by the Central Election Commission: Oleksander Moroz, Anatolii Kinakh, Bohdan Boiko, Petro Symonenko, Vasyl Volha, Leonid Chernovetskyi and Oleksander Omelchenko. Vitalii Kononov, an eighth candidate, whose signature lists had already been approved by the CEC, withdrew his candidacy on September 23, stating that he was doing so at the behest of the Green Party, which he headed, and explaining that he was acting as a good "soldier of the party." He joined Hryhorii Chernysh, who withdrew after the latter failed to submit the required signature lists in support of his candidacy by the September 20 deadline. The other 10 candidates who made the September 20 filing deadline were: Andrii Chornovil, Ihor Dushyn, Dmytro Korchynskyi, Roman Kozak, Yurii Zbitniev, Oleksander Bazyliuk, Oleksander Kryvobokov, Oleksander Yakovenko, Volodymyr Nechyporuk and Oleksander Rzhavskyi.

Over a month before the filing deadline, however, Mr. Yushchenko accused the state militia of secretly tracking him. The charge, made on August 10, came after members of his campaign team caught individuals with sophisticated camera equipment photographing Mr. Yushchenko as he ascended Ay Petri, the highest peak in the Crimean Mountains. The Ministry of Internal Affairs did not deny that state militia officers had been following the Yushchenko entourage. It claimed during a press conference in Symferopol that the officers had been acting as a security detail for the presidential candidate. However Mr. Yushchenko said he had not approved any such security detail.

Less than a week earlier the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, a watchdog organization, issued a statement in which it noted that administrative resources - government finances, personnel and authority - were already being tapped illegally in Ukraine's presidential election campaigns. It reported on August 3 that "reliable evidence suggests that governmental officials in several sectors are illegally abusing public institutions to manipulate the outcome of the October 31 presidential election," reported Interfax-Ukraine.

With less than two months before Ukrainians were to go to the ballot box for the first time on October 31, a number of poll results came out that showed the race between the two front-runners was growing tighter. In one survey, conducted by several local Ukrainian organizations, 30 percent of voters were ready to cast their ballots for Mr. Yushchenko in the first round of the elections, while 27 percent would vote for Mr. Yanukovych. (The polls' margin of error was 2 percent.) In a second round of voting, 38 percent of the electorate would vote for Mr. Yushchenko, 33 percent for Mr. Yanukovych and 13 percent for neither candidate, with another 16 percent opting to keep mum about their choice, the poll indicated. Despite figures demonstrating a Yushchenko victory, a whopping 48 percent of those surveyed were certain that Mr. Yanukovych would become the next president.

The Supreme Court of Ukraine, the final arbiter of election-related disputes, weighed in on the equal access to mass media issue. On September 14 it ruled in favor of the Yushchenko campaign, which had filed six complaints with the court against the Central Election Commission (CEC) regarding the lack of access by the candidate to many of Ukraine's largest television networks.

The Committee of Voters of Ukraine, considered to be a prestigious and trusted Ukrainian civic organization, warned on October 6 that the Ukrainian presidential election was under threat and that conditions might arise that could make it impossible to hold a vote on October 31.

As the CVU was making its assessment, National Deputy Yurii Karmazin, a member of the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc within the Verkhovna Rada and a former prosecutor in Odesa, was telling colleagues on the parliamentary floor that already plans were afoot to take the stakes still higher. Mr. Karmazin, a former prosecutor in Odesa, said he had received information that certain individuals within the presidential administration had ordered the assassination of Prime Minister Yanukovych to discredit the presidential aspirations of his opponent Mr. Yushchenko, who was to be blamed for the murder.

The same day that Mr. Karmazin leveled his allegations, members of the Yanukovych campaign team, including National Deputy Stepan Havrysh, who is also majority leader in the Ukrainian Parliament, ridiculed assertions and even video documentation by pro-Yushchenko supporters that Yanukovych supporters had printed more than $10 million worth of smear literature lampooning the Power of the People candidate while utilizing American political symbols. Several Ukrainian lawmakers of Mr. Yushchenko's Our Ukraine faction had discovered the literature - over 150 tons of it - in two warehouses located on the grounds of the Ukrainian Exhibition Center in Kyiv, after receiving tips from concerned citizens. The campaign literature, which depicted Mr. Yushchenko as a U.S. stooge and included caricatures of his face superimposed on a portrait of U.S. President George Bush.

The race then took yet another turn when, two weeks prior to election day, one of the final polls allowed to be published prior to the presidential vote of October 31 showed that Mr. Yanukovych had taken the lead over Mr. Yushchenko in the race for the presidency. A Democratic Initiatives Foundation rolling poll conducted on October 9-10 showed that the Ukrainian prime minister maintained a slim 34 percent to 31.6 percent lead over Mr. Yushchenko, whose campaigning abilities were limited in the final weeks as he had been fighting to recuperate from the dioxin poisoning.

Ilko Kucheriv, director of DIF, said the lead change at the close of the presidential horse race was the result of an effective although quite populist strategy used by Mr. Yanukovych to appeal to older voters and Communist Party sympathizers by dramatically raising pensions and calling for official status for the Russian language in Ukraine while also promising Ukrainians dual citizenship with Russia.

The week after the poll was released a meeting and rally of the All-Ukrainian Students' Council gathered about 20,000 people before the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Kyiv on October 16 to listen to Mr. Yushchenko speak.

But a rally the following week indicated how strong Mr. Yushchenko's support really was in the capital. Nearly 100,000 supporters of the opposition candidate filled Lesia Ukrainka Square on October 23, turning the plaza into a sea of orange banners and bandanas, to urge the Central Election Committee (CEC) to ensure that a transparent and honest vote count takes place on Election Day.

Even as the rally-goers gathered, law enforcement worked to lower the turnout, carefully and slowly controlling the ingress of vehicles into Kyiv. Gates at militia outposts at the city borders were drawn down, and cars and trucks were being checked and turned away at times. Most of the crowd calmly dispersed after the 30-minute presentation, but about 10,000 to 20,000 remained to await the results of a special CEC meeting called to decide the matter of the number of voting precincts that would be established in Russia, (ultimately regjecting the proposed 420 districts and settling on 41.)

The crowd remained in full force until around 9 p.m., when lawmakers from the Power of the People election coalition, who were meeting with the CEC in what was a very hot debate, came outside to ask them to begin to disperse. Around 10:50 p.m. only a few hundred supporters remained when several dozen young men came running from the street toward the crowd before the building, throwing bottles and rocks, and swinging objects, including knives, which cut several people. Eleven victims were treated at a local hospital.

It was at this point in the election season that readers first began to learn about the Ukrainian student group named Pora, which means It's Time.

Ukrainian state militia officials said on October 15 they had discovered an explosive device at Pora offices, located not far from where a large student demonstration in support of Mr. Yushchenko took place the next day. Two student activists were arrested and charged with being terrorists. The members of the group who were in the office and members of the Our Ukraine faction in Ukraine's Parliament who were present as the bomb search was conducted stridently maintained that no bomb was found other than what the law enforcement officials themselves planted. They said it was yet another attempt to discredit organizations and individuals tied to the Yushchenko campaign.

Four Pora members, speaking during a press conference in Kyiv on October 21, acknowledged that they had consulted on how to promote student activism with former members of the Serbian student group Otpor. They also freely admitted to having been in contact with the Georgian student group Kmara. The four Pora members, however, said their aim was not violent uprising but to organize student activists in an anti-Yanukovych campaign.

Meanwhile, with the atmosphere surrounding the election continued to deteriorate, 25 ambassadors from European Union countries who have representations in Kyiv gathered in the local office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe on October 27 to issue a declaration warning Ukrainian state officials to stop abuses of recognized democratic campaign standards and allow a free and fair vote in the October 31 presidential election. The declaration, read by Ambassador Marie Florence van Es of the Netherlands came five days after law enforcement and intelligence service officers searched the Pora offices. An interim OSCE report on the election process in Ukraine, cited as the basis for the EU statement, noted widespread concern that an effort was being made to falsify, invalidate or even cancel the election by declaring a state of emergency in the country.

With the campaign portion of the elections finally wrapped up, both Messrs. Yushchenko and Yanukovych claimed victory in the October 31 presidential election in what was a close vote count. Four days after the vote, the Central Election Committee had yet to publish the final tally, even though it had counted 95 percent of the returns within a 10-hour time period. CEC Chairman Kivalov had stopped the vote count unexpectedly at midday on November 1, stating that the commission members would take a break.

Lawmakers who supported Mr. Yushchenko went to the CEC on November 3 to inquire why the returns were not being updated and released to the public. National Deputy Ostash said he had information that the vote was almost fully counted. Mr. Ostash, along with lawmakers Ivan Pliusch, Yevhen Chervonenko and Mr. Kliuchkovskyi, with election observers from the OSCE and two former presidential candidates in tow, also tried to determine whether the election results were first going to the presidential administration for tweaking before being routed to the CEC computer, as some sources alleged.

The CEC officially announced on November 10 that Mr. Yushchenko had won the first round of voting by just more than a half percentage point. The CEC results showed Mr. Yushchenko with 39.7 percent of the vote and Mr. Yanukovych with 39.32 percent support. Sixteen of Ukraine's 24 oblasts plus the city of Kyiv went for Mr. Yushchenko, mostly from the western and central regions of the country, while Mr. Yanukovych received the overwhelming majority of votes in eight eastern and southern oblasts, as well as in the Crimean Autonomous Republic and the city of Sevastopol. The result set the stage for a run-off between the lawmaker and the prime minister, as Ukrainian election law dictates when no candidate receives 50 percent voter support.

The Yushchenko team never received responses to questions about a second computer, a "transit server," that allegedly was operating in the Presidential Administration Building, and that all voting results traveling by computer from the territorial commissions to the CEC were routed through the office of President Kuchma's chief of staff, Mr. Medvedchuk, while CEC Chairman Kivalov remained aloof in the matter.

Most domestic and international observers offered severe criticism of Ukraine's presidential elections a day after the October 31 vote. The authoritative Committee of Voters of Ukraine noted that the most extensive problems with the Ukrainian presidential vote were the numerous inaccuracies in the voter lists and the illegal manner in which the elections commissions were stacked with individuals connected to the government or Prime Minister Yanukovych.

With the first round of voting concluded and the field of candidates down to two people, Mr. Yushchenko's campaign was given a significant boost when presidential candidate Oleksander Moroz, who came in third in the first round of the presidential elections in Ukraine, and the Socialist Party he leads on November 6, endorsed Mr. Yushchenko in the November 21run-off.

First to follow Mr. Moroz's lead was former Prime Minister Anatolii Kinakh, the leader of the Party of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, who did so on November 8. The next day Leonid Chernovetskyi, a lawmaker and the chairman of one of Ukraine's largest banks, who also heads the Christian Democratic Party in Ukraine, declared for Mr. Yushchenko as well. Immediately after the final vote tally for the first round was announced, Kyiv Mayor Oleksander Omelchenko, another in the field of candidates who did not make it past the first round, announced that, inasmuch as 63 percent of Kyiv residents had supported Mr. Yushchenko in the first round, he felt bound to endorse the presidential candidate for the run-off. The four former candidates had a combined vote tally of 7.67 percent.

Mr. Yanukovych, meanwhile, received an endorsement from Progressive Socialist Party Chairwoman Natalia Vitrenko, who received 1.53 percent of the electoral vote in her failed bid for the presidency. Ms. Vitrenko noted that Mr. Yanukovych's campaign platform and her own were very similar.

Petro Symonenko, chairman of the Communist Party, who finished fourth in the preliminary vote behind Mr. Moroz with 4.97 percent of the vote, continued to maintain that he would support neither one of the two remaining candidates.

In another first for Ukrainian voters, the two presidential candidates squared off in the first ever televised presidential debate. The event was a national television spectacle, with one Ukrainian television rating firm, GFK-USM, stating that its survey showed that 55.6 percent of households in population centers with more than 50,000 inhabitants had watched at least five minutes, while 43.3 percent watched at least a half-hour.

In the end, both Mr. Yushchenko, and Prime Minister Yanukovych, said they had gained advantage from the 90-minute "debate" during the candidates alternately addressed the four general topics that had been agreed upon after negotiations between the candidates and the CEC: social policy, the economy, domestic policy and foreign policy.

Messrs. Yushchenko and Yanukovych used the final 10 days of their respective campaigns before the November 21 vote to concentrate on trips to the southern and eastern regions of the country.

Mr. Yanukovych joined outgoing President Kuchma on November 12 for a meeting with Russia's President Vladimir Putin in the Crimean city of Kerch. While officially designated a meeting to renew the Caucasus-Crimea ferry transportation route between Ukraine and Russia, the ribbon-cutting and document-signing ceremonies looked more like photo opportunities in which the Ukrainian prime minister was presented nearest the Russian president or in earnest conversation with him. Mr. Yanukovych continued to focus his supporters and Ukrainian voters on his intention to allow them dual citizenship and to make the Russian language a second official language in Ukraine. He also said he was inclined to develop a state reserve fund to promote spending on defense to sustain that industry, which he said could "cause an irreversible technological lag in Ukraine," if it continued to be neglected.

Meanwhile, Mr. Yushchenko obtained the endorsement of Ukraine's boxing Klitschko brothers, world champion Vitalii and his younger brother Volodymyr, who announced their support for his candidacy on November 15 during an appearance on Channel 5. The Klitschko brothers were shortly followed by chess champion Ruslan Ponomariov and Ruslana Lyzhychko, the singer who won the EuroVision championship this past year.

Then, in a move that appeared to help fend off falsifications, Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada banned the use of absentee voter certificates in the presidential election run-off, with 236 lawmakers supporting the draft law. The law, which came on November 18, three days before the second round of voting was to take place, occurred after extensive reports that the abuse of absentee certificates was the leading manner in which the presidential campaign team of Prime Minister Yanukovych had ensured that its candidate stayed in the race with his competitor in the first round.

With the second round of voting concluded, the CEC announced on November 24 that Mr. Yanukovych had won the November 21 presidential election run-off, even after international observers noted extensive vote fraud, which had directly affected the results. The official tally as the CEC presented it was 49.46 percent of voters supporting Mr. Yanukovych and 46.61 percent going for Mr. Yushchenko. Mr. Yanukovych took 10 of Ukraine's 24 oblasts plus Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, while Mr. Yushchenko had the margin of victory in 14 oblasts and the city of Kyiv. Four of the 15 election commissioners did not support the official tallies as an accurate reflection of how the nation voted and refused to place their signatures on the corresponding documents.

The final tallies were made official as many countries of the European Union, along with the United States, said they would not recognize the validity of the vote, based on a highly critical assessment by the highly regarded observer team of the OSCE. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Washington could not accept the announced election results and said there could be consequences for Ukraine if efforts were not made immediately to correct the situation. Bruce George, chairman of the OSCE mission, said during a press conference in Kyiv on November 22 that the election run-off did not meet a number of minimum standards for democratic elections of the OSCE and the Council of Europe.

The final results were announced as some 750,000 people massed on Independence Square in Kyiv in a third day of demonstrations, and millions more protested the fraudulent election returns in most all the oblast centers of western and central Ukraine. In what quickly became known as the Orange Revolution, millions of Ukrainians demonstrated in towns and cities across the central and western regions - more than a half million in Kyiv alone - calling for state authorities to recognize that presidential elections had been rigged.

Students of all Kyiv universities and many more across the country were on strike. Many shops and cities closed. Tent cities mushroomed along the entire stretch of the Kyiv's main thoroughfare, the Khreschatyk, and on the perimeter of the territory of the Presidential Administration Building. Demonstrations of angry citizens in dozens of Ukrainian towns and cities - from 10,000 in Odesa to 110,000 in Lviv and 100,000 in Kharkiv - quickly spread eastward in the country. Law enforcement officials remained restrained in responding to the mass protests.

Meanwhile, Mr. Yanukovych said on November 24 that the government and the state were working in normal fashion. "There is nothing unusual occurring. Nothing," said Mr. Yanukovych at the opening of the weekly session of the Cabinet of Ministers.

Even so, dozens of buses filled with Internal Affairs Ministry forces encircled the tent city on the Khreschatyk the night of November 24. Channel 5, the television station that had become the prime source of information for most of Ukraine on the developments in Kyiv once the mass disturbances began, aired videotape taken the evening of November 23, which showed tanks and cannons being loaded onto railcars in Zaporizhia, ostensibly headed for Kyiv. There were also reports, including one by National Deputy Tymoshenko who was among the organizers of the peaceful mass demonstrations, that Russian Special Forces were stationed in Kyiv outfitted in Ukrainian military uniforms.

In the wake of the November 21 run-off, other news media began to rebel against government directives and broadcasters began to give viewers impartial reports.

Speaking the evening of November 23 during one of several addresses over the last days to the mass of humanity that had kept vigil on Independence Square, Mr. Yushchenko said that Ukrainian voters had been denied some 3.2 million votes, which he maintained were falsified or manipulated in favor of Prime Minister Yanukovych.

During a special session of the Ukrainian Parliament held on November 24, Mr. Yushchenko symbolically took the oath of office of the president of Ukraine as 191 lawmakers who supported his Power of the People election coalition watched. The other 259 lawmakers who made up the Ukrainian legislature failed to turn up for the emergency session of the Parliament, originally called to review the validity of the presidential vote.

The arrival of dozens of buses from Donetsk, filled with individuals organized by supporters of Mr. Yanukovych, also caused concern. The Yanukovych supporters, several thousand at most, who loitered for more than a day around the buses, which were parked at the outer edge of the city center, moved to the Cabinet of Ministers Building the morning of November 24. Later that day they had occupied the territory around the CEC.

Meanwile, a tent city of close to 400 structures - draped in Mr. Yushchenko's campaign color orange and inhabited by more than 1,000 supporters of Mr. Yushchenko - continued to function on Independence Square. Another 2,000 to 3,000 people guarded the territory after dark to prevent a nighttime assault by law enforcement. Park benches were lined up as a defense perimeter on one side of Independence Square. Demonstration organizers had assured an adequate supply of water and basic foods, even though many protesters jammed cafeterias and fast food eateries nearby for some variety in their diet. Locals came out in force to provide hot food and tea for people.

As the Orange Revolution moved into its second week, European leaders mediated negotiations in Kyiv between the two rival presidential contenders to move Ukraine from the brink of fragmentation. The talks were aimed at resolving the impasse over who actually won the November 21 run-off election, as political events kept moving at lightning speed, providing no certainty or specifics on how the country's deepest crisis since it broke from the Soviet Union 13 years ago would end. Polish President Alexander Kwasniewski, Lithuanian President Valdus Adamkus, European Union External Affairs Commissioner Javier Solana and OSCE Secretary General Jan Kubis, along with Borys Gryzlov, chairman of the Russian State Duma, Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma and the two candidates, Messrs. Yushchenko and Yanukovych, met to negotiate.

The sides issued a statement after the three-and-a half-hour meeting at the Mariyinskyi Palace in Kyiv in which they noted that the two presidential contenders had agreed to resume negotiations to determine when and in what manner another national vote would take place to determine the next president. The statement noted that the parties had agreed that steps would be taken in preparation for the election, including changes to the current election law, completion of the political reform process, which would involve amendments to the Constitution, and the appointment of a new government and prime minister.

The statement, read to journalists by President Kuchma, included an agreement by the Yushchenko camp to withdraw blockades by demonstrators that surrounded both the Presidential Administration and the Cabinet of Ministers buildings for over a week, in return for assurances that state authorities would not use force to clear the Khreschatyk, where hundreds of thousands of Yushchenko supporters had lived for over 10 days. On the following day, however, the two government buildings remained encircled by Yushchenko supporters.

Further deepening the crisis, Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada met prior to the arrival of the European leaders and by a slim margin supported a vote of no confidence in the government of Prime Minister Yanukovych. In accordance with the Constitution of Ukraine, the vote should have forced the government and its leader to resign, but Mr. Yanukovych said he did not accept the manner in which the vote took place.

As the European leaders met and the Verkhovna Rada sat in session, Ukraine's Supreme Court continued to consider complaints of voting improprieties filed by officials of the Yushchenko campaign team - more than 10,000 in all. The Yushchenko team argued that vote fraud and falsification of the count was so extensive as to force a cancellation of the results in some voting districts, primarily in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, regions that overwhelmingly supported Mr. Yanukovych.

Meanwhile, officials in Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv had threatened to split from Ukraine and form a separate southeastern republic if the presidency should go to Mr. Yushchenko. A special congress of concerned government officials from the eastern regions of Ukraine met in Siverodonetsk on November 27 and resolved to hold a referendum on the matter of separation from Ukraine on December 5. Mr. Yanukovych, while present at the meeting to provide moral support, stated during his presentation to the delegates that he could not allow for a split within the country. He did, however, tell the congress that it should do whatever it could to assure that the opposition didn't win the presidency.

Within days the eastern oblasts had stepped back from the precipice. After President Kuchma angrily warned the chairman of those regions against separation during a hastily called meeting in Kyiv attended by Mr. Yanukovych, the regional leaders alternately explained that separatism had never been seriously discussed. The issue before them had been the possibility of an autonomous republic within a federative Ukrainian state.

In perhaps the most bizarre point of the election, Mr. Yanukovych's wife, Liudmyla, then told a crowd of some 30,000 supporters of her husband, who had gathered in Donetsk, that demonstration organizers in Kyiv were feeding the crowds on Independence Square oranges filled with narcotics to keep them on the streets. She also said that a meningitis epidemic was raging in Kyiv, and that many demonstrators were hospitalized from dehydration, lack of food and alcohol poisoning.

On December 3 the Supreme Court of Ukraine on December 3 overturned the CEC's decision to designate Mr. Yanukovych the winner of the election. The court ordered a repeat of a run-off vote between Messrs. Yanukovych and Yushchenko to be held on December 26. The 21-judge panel emerged after seven hours of deliberation and presiding Justice Anatolii Yarema read the decision that satisfied four of the five points in the complaint filed by Mr. Yushchenko's legal team, denying only the Yushchenko team's appeal to name their candidate the winner of the presidential election. The court concluded that electoral fraud was systemic in nature.

CEC officials had taken the stand on December 1 and 2. CEC member Andriy Magera, testified that he refused to sign the protocol on the election results because he was not provided with supporting data that showed the results were valid. He said that numbers were filled in to the official returns before the CEC received all of the results. Mr. Magera also told the court that he saw fake absentee voter certificates. Ruslan Kniazevych, who also refused to sign off on the official results, testified that the access codes to the CEC's computer systems were seized the day before the vote by "unknown forces." Halyna Mandrusov, director of the ProCom firm that was responsible for the computer systems confirmed the fact that data coming into the CEC was manipulated "from the outside."

Meanwhile, at the Verkhovna Rada 300 deputies passed a vote of no confidence in the CEC.

Other officials who decided they were not satisfied with the results of the November 21 ballot included some 150 diplomats in Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including the head of the press office, Markian Lubkivskyi. Together they issued a statement in which they said they would refuse to carry out directives by the state not in line with the wishes of the people.

Tensions in the political crisis were lifted somewhat on December 8 after the Verkhovna Rada overwhelmingly approved a new law on presidential elections and changes to the country's Constitution. Supporters of Mr. Yushchenko voted together with the pro-President Kuchma parliamentary caucuses, the Communists and the Socialists to provide 402 votes for three bills in a single package. Outgoing president Leonid Kuchma was present in Parliament to immediately sign the laws.

The changes were described as transforming the form of Ukraine's government from a "presidential-parliamentary" republic to a "parliamentary-presidential" one.

Following the vote, the Verkhovna Rada's next order of business was the approval of new members of the 15-member CEC. Eleven of the 15 former members and four new commissioners were approved. Parliament did not approve Mr. Kivalov, who headed the CEC during the two scandal-ridden rounds of presidential elections. Mr. Kivalov promptly left the session hall as opposition deputies sounded catcalls after him. Later that day, Yaroslav Davydovych, a veteran CEC member who had refused to sign the contested presidential election results from November 21, was approved to head the elections body.

Several weeks later the two presidential contenders squared off again in a live debate. However, on this occasion, it was a lively exchange on national television and was hailed by members of both camps as a landmark event. Mr. Yanukovych repeatedly asked that the two candidates work together after the election, while Mr. Yushchenko directly accused his rival of stealing some 3 million votes in the run-off election. The candidate spoke directly to one another, posing and answering each other's questions during the 104-minute nationally televised event on December 20.

With the tent city still standing, blocking a portion of the Khreshchatyk to traffic, and a stage erected on Independence square, Ukrainians took to the polls for the third time in two months on December 26. The Central Election Commission announced on December 25 that it had registered a record number of 12,542 monitors to watch over the vote throughout the country's 33,300 voting stations, most of whom said the vote was free of the widespread irregularities that plagued the November election.

According to preliminary results released by the CEC, Mr. Yushchenko won 51.99 percent to Mr. Yanukovych's 44.19 percent, a difference of about 2.3 million votes. Out of 37,289,023 eligible Ukrainian voters, some 77.22 percent, or 28,796,993, voted - a decrease from the 80.85 percent that voted in the November 21 run-off. Mr. Yushchenko won 17 regions of Ukraine's total 27.

"During 14 years we were independent, but we were not free," the Our Ukraine leader told a crowd of 5,000 people at Independence Square at 3 a.m. "Now we can say this is a thing of the past. Now we are facing an independent and free Ukraine." He added, "Now, today, the Ukrainian people have won. I congratulate you."

Mr. Yanukovych, however, insisted that millions of Ukrainians were denied access to the polls - either by restrictive new voting rules or by intimidation by Mr. Yushchenko's supporters - and his campaign team announced they had launched an appeal of the election in all of Ukraine's 225 election districts. As of the end of the year, Mr. Yanukovych still had not conceded defeat, and Mr. Yushchenko was still awaiting his inauguration day.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, January 16, 2005, No. 2, Vol. LXXIII

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