The presidential election in Ukraine is considered to have taken place, the president of the Central Elections Commission Andrey Magera said.
During a CEC briefing, he reminded that according to the election law, the election could be declared invalid if both presidential candidates gain an same number of votes.
Magera said that a probability of such a scenario is about 0,01 %. "I do not have an impression that the election in Ukraine is invalid", he added.
Yankovich leads in eight of Ukrainian regions: Donetsk, Lugansk, Khar'kovsk, Dnepropetrpovsk, Zaporozhie, Nikolaevsk, Kherson and Odessa, and also in the Crimmia and in Sevastopol.
Timoshenko won in 16 regions: L'vovsk, Ivano-Frankovsk, Ternopol, Volyn, Rovno, Zakapatie, Khmelnitsky, Chernovtsy, Zhitomir, Vinnitsa, Chernigov, Sumy, Kirovograd, Poltava, and Kiev. Timoshenko also won in votes from abroad.
The Party of Regions believes Timoshenko cannot succeed in organizing mass protests as in 2004. But just in case, the "regionals" gathered its own supporters to "defend the results of the election" before the CEC. According to MIA, a crowd of up to 50,000 people was expected.
The Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc says it will not organize rallies until the official results are announced and a legal expertise is made. Lawyers at the headquarters of Yulia Tymoshenko began already to look for opportunities to dispute the election results of the second round in the courts, the media reports.
The turnout in the second round of presidential elections in Ukraine made 69.07%. The data was received from all 225 regions and published by the Central Elections Commission.
Meanwhile, some experts do not exclude a possibility of mass protests in Ukraine. The head of the Center for political studies (PENTA), Vladimir Fesenko, assumes that a small difference in votes would raise doubts about the legitimacy and honesty of the election and there would be mass protests by Tymoshenko's supporters.
A confrontation between peoples once again real in Ukraine, he says. Meanwhile, Yulia Tymoshenko is not in a hurry to recognize her defeat.
"The results, which were announced at the exit polls are only statistics. The difference of 3% is within the statistical margin of error. Therefore, it is too early to draw any conclusions".
"We will not speak about final results till the last moment. We will fight for every vote", Tymoshenko warned.
The first vice-premier Aleksander Turchinov commented on the scope of violations during the election, "We were not able to avoid mass falsifications", he said adding it would be possible to speak about the validity of the election only after receiving official reports about the violations.
Department of Monitoring,
Kavkaz Center
Publication time: 8 February 2010, 09:50
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