By Halil Cihan Ergul
The presidential election held in November and December 2004 in Ukraine was mostly a political battle between former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych and opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko. Behind this picture, a more diverse and yet a deeper power struggle was taking place between pro-Europeans and Russian loyalists. First, Yanukovych was declared the winner of the Ukrainian presidential election of 2004, held on Oct. 31 and Nov. 21. However, the legitimacy of his official victory was questioned by many Ukrainians, international organizations and foreign governments.
As many Ukranians claimed, pro-Russian local authorities kept putting totalitarian pressure on people, scaring them with job dismissals or suspension of wages if they made a “wrong choice”. And, as the Supreme Court of Ukraine approved later on, Yanukovych supporters in many governmental positions engaged in falsifying the election process by producing absurd figures such as 120 percent attendance rate in some “preferred” regions of the country, etc. Observers also reported many other irregularities, particularly in the regions where Yushchenko’s support was seen to be strongest.
After the questionable second round, Viktor Yanukovych was declared the winner by a slight difference. This result was perceived as a violation of citizens’ rights to fair choice and provoked mass protests throughout Ukraine. Russia, on the other hand, chose to ignore this movement (later it will be called the Orange Revolution) and congratulated the pro-government candidate for the victory. Doubtlessly, this result was quite in line with Russia’s current Ukraine politics which still want to see Ukraine as its own territory.
The first official sign of opposition to this result came when the Ukranian Parliament passed a non-binding motion of no confidence in this new government on Dec. 1, 2004. A few days later, the Supreme Court of Ukraine annulled the results of Nov. 21 voting, resulting in a second official run-off election. Before the elections, west regions of the country mainly supported the pro-European candidate Yushchenko, as north and east parts of the country were more in favor of pro-Russian candidate Yanukovych. But because of many irregularities in the election process coupled with growing antipathy to corrupt relations with Russia, public opinion in the east parts as well started to favor the opposition candidate, Yanukovych, and elected him as the result of the second runoff election.
Growing public opposition to the former government was not only because of the irregularities in this election process. After the second round, the invisible hand of authority also exercised a political tradition coming from medivial eras and poisoned the pro-European winner of the election. This was later confirmed to be the result of ingesting high levels of dioxin. This was followed by the death of a young journalist who discovered various corrupt relations in the former government and raised questions about the role of Ukrainian government in his passing.
As a result, today’s Ukraine is more on its way to democracy as Ukrainian people realize how powerful they are. Rationally speaking, no one denies the strong economic and cultural ties of Ukraine with the north, but at the same time other alternatives for the future of country such as the one the European Union has been providing for years also finds strong support in public opinion. In the path toward democracy, the people of Ukraine changed the destiny of their country in a couple of days and more importantly they did it without causing a real chaos. Thousands of protesters marched along the streets of Ukraine, sometimes they were confronted with government, but no one died through this challenge, which is what makes it even more remarkable in the eve of many other elections in the Asia and Middle East.
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