Ukraine’s Flawed Democracy

Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich is set to defeat opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko as results from yesterday’s presidential runoff elections come in. Associated Press reports “Yanukovych leads the presidential race with 49.58% to Viktor Yushchenko’s 46.57%, with 98.24% of precincts counted. Earlier partial results showed Mr. Yanukovych less than one percentage point ahead.” Exit polls had shown Yushchenko with a lead of four to ten percentage points going in to the runoff.
Yanukovich has received support from Ukraine’s president Leonid Kuchma, who has served two five-year terms in Kiev, and Russia’s president Vladimir Putin. Yushchenko’s supporters claimed widespread fraud and intimidation; New York Times has more. Washington Post writes that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has said that there were gross and pervasive flaws in the accountability of the results. What’s more:

U.S. Senator Richard Lugar, monitoring the election for the White House, said the Ukrainian authorities had supported concerted fraud.
“It is now apparent that there was a concerted and forceful programme of election day fraud and abuse enacted with the leadership or cooperation of authorities,” said Lugar, Republican head of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Lugar was instrumental in the mid-80s in persuading Ronald Reagan to withdraw support for the Marcos government in the Philippines. He is — as an ITAR/TASS profile from the mid-80s described him — a “black” (conservative, as in rouge and noir) Republican and not someone given to exaggeration.