Despite growing unrest, Ukraine certifies winner in election

In defiance of Western leaders and amid growing popular unrest on the streets, the government of Leonid D. Kuchma, the outgoing president of Ukraine, ignored reports of widespread electoral fraud and certified his prime minister today as president-elect.

The action ended two days of indecisiveness at the top of government in Kiev as a political crisis had deepened, and signaled a decision by Ukraine's incumbent leadership to risk a chill in relations with the West in order to maintain a grip on power.

Ukraine's certification of the election also intensified the marked differences between the ruling government and its emboldened opposition, whose supporters stood in a huge, impassioned rally in falling snow near the capital's center, saying they would continue to resist what they regard as an election stolen by the government's hand.

Kiev was electric with energy today, and even at the moment of Mr. Kuchma's assertive and apparently calculated step, its risks and the depths of the opposition against it were evident.

At the tumultuous meeting of the Central Election Commission, as the government declared Prime Minister Viktor F. Yanukovich the winner of the presidential run-off on Sunday, giving him 49.46 of the vote to 46.61 percent for the opposition challenger, Viktor A. Yushchenko, people in the chamber heckled the reading of the results.

"You will answer in court!" one man shouted at the head of the commission, Sergei Kivalov.

Riot police were stationed outside behind a defensive ring of sand-filled dump trucks, as were busloads of dour and thick-set men from Donetsk, the eastern Ukrainian region from which much of the current ruling class comes. The newly arrived men waved the blue flags of the Yanukovich campaign and warned away opposition supporters with menacing sneers, and in at least one case, threats.

Mr. Yushchenko, addressing tens of thousands of his supporters not long before he was declared the official loser, said the election results were rigged to the point of being an effective coup. He vowed to continue to fight for the executive office, and called on the army and police to ignore orders to put down the demonstrations by force.

Western election observers, and Western leaders, have been unequivocally critical of Sunday's election here, saying the extensive documentation of organized fraud and the abuse of state powers to the prime minister's advantage have tainted its official result and called into question its validity.

The spokespeople were alternately conciliatory and inflammatory, perhaps a reflection of the difficulty of their task, given that by Ukrainian law the results did not have to be certified until early December and requests for investigations from the West were pouring in.

Sergei Tyhypko, Mr. Yanukovich's campaign manager, chose a softer line, suggesting compromise by saying the president-elect would be willing to talk with Mr. Yushchenko to discuss government restructuring. "We can give certain guarantees," he said. "We can conduct political reform, reducing the rights of the president and giving more power to the parliament."

Source: Agencies