Chaos
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Sep 15, 2003
- Messages
- 10,611
Just when I thought the US election was about as contested and divisive as elections can be, I hear all this stuff about the elections in Ukraine.
Ukraine held presidential election on October 31st, two days before US elections - which might be why they didn´t attract much attention even though the mud-slinging exceeded even US levels - for example the opposition candidate, Yushchenko, accused supporters of the current president´s chosen successorm, Yanukovych, of poisoning him.
Elections didn´t produce a clear winner. Yushchenko and Yanukovych scored 39.8% and 39.3%, respectively, but they´d have needed 50+% to instantly win the elections.
So run-off elections were held last Sunday, November 21st. Both elections came with massive protests of election fraud coming from the opposition and Western European observers, while government officials and observers from Russia and other ex-Soviet countries denied that any irregularities had taken place.
Officially, Yanukovych, who is also Putin´s preferred candidate, clearly won the run-off elections. The supporters of Yushchenko, who is more of a pro-Western politician, are protesting in the streets of Kiev - at least 100,000 of them.
This afternoon, between lectures, I talk about this with my Ukrainian co-student. She tells me she talked to her mother, who still lives in Kiev, last evening; her mother painted a very alarming picture of the Ukraine right now:
She said that security forces - I am not sure if she meant police or some other force - are cordoning off Kiev and stopping traffic from western Ukraine, where Yushchenko enjoys a lot of support, from entering the city. Protests in Kiev are peaceful so far, but it seems people are getting angrier and angrier.
More alarmingly, several districts, mostly in Western Ukraine, have refused to accept the election results, and have proclaimed Yushchenko to be the new president. There are also rumors that units of the military and security forces have started proclaiming their loyalty to either Yushchenko or Yanukovych. My co-student says there is the very serious possibility that civil war will break out.
For my part, I don´t know what to think of this. Except, of course, to be worried. If memory serves me, Ukraine retained some the nuclear weapons of the Soviet arsenal, and who knows what might happen to these if things come to blows...
Ukraine held presidential election on October 31st, two days before US elections - which might be why they didn´t attract much attention even though the mud-slinging exceeded even US levels - for example the opposition candidate, Yushchenko, accused supporters of the current president´s chosen successorm, Yanukovych, of poisoning him.
Elections didn´t produce a clear winner. Yushchenko and Yanukovych scored 39.8% and 39.3%, respectively, but they´d have needed 50+% to instantly win the elections.
So run-off elections were held last Sunday, November 21st. Both elections came with massive protests of election fraud coming from the opposition and Western European observers, while government officials and observers from Russia and other ex-Soviet countries denied that any irregularities had taken place.
Officially, Yanukovych, who is also Putin´s preferred candidate, clearly won the run-off elections. The supporters of Yushchenko, who is more of a pro-Western politician, are protesting in the streets of Kiev - at least 100,000 of them.
This afternoon, between lectures, I talk about this with my Ukrainian co-student. She tells me she talked to her mother, who still lives in Kiev, last evening; her mother painted a very alarming picture of the Ukraine right now:
She said that security forces - I am not sure if she meant police or some other force - are cordoning off Kiev and stopping traffic from western Ukraine, where Yushchenko enjoys a lot of support, from entering the city. Protests in Kiev are peaceful so far, but it seems people are getting angrier and angrier.
More alarmingly, several districts, mostly in Western Ukraine, have refused to accept the election results, and have proclaimed Yushchenko to be the new president. There are also rumors that units of the military and security forces have started proclaiming their loyalty to either Yushchenko or Yanukovych. My co-student says there is the very serious possibility that civil war will break out.
For my part, I don´t know what to think of this. Except, of course, to be worried. If memory serves me, Ukraine retained some the nuclear weapons of the Soviet arsenal, and who knows what might happen to these if things come to blows...
D) Yushchenko himself has taken an illegitimate oath proclaiming himself to be president, so I think that if parts of the country are also standing behind him in that then civil war could be on the cards, unless the other guy sees sense. 
