Thursday, February 18, 2010

Court puts on hold Yanukovych victory in Ukraine presidential election

A Ukrainian court has temporarily suspended the results of the February 2010 presidential election pending review of an appeal filed by Yulia Tymoshenko.

The supreme administrative court released a statement on February 17 2010 saying the Central Election Commission ruling that declared Viktor Yanukovych the winner had been put on hold, according to a report by the Voice of America.

Tymoshenko has lodged court action seeking to overturn the results of the February 7 vote. Tymoshenko, Ukraine's current prime minister, says the election was rigged. She has refused to concede defeat.

Ukraine’s parliament earlier voted to approve the swearing-in of Yanukovych on February 25 2010 as president, over the objections of the Tymoshenko camp, which boycotted the vote while Tymoshenko formally lodged her court action challenging Yanukovych’s win.

Tymoshenko went to the supreme administrative court on February 16 with crates of evidence that she says backs up her allegations of vote-rigging.

International observers have deemed the election that produced Yanukovych’s victory as in line with accepted standards, and Yanukovych already has been congratulated by the White House, the Kremlin and the European Union, among others.

Official results say that Tymoshenko lost by about 888 000 votes, while she alleges that electoral fraud deprived her of about a million votes.

Officials of Yanukovych’s Party of the Regions say that it is not possible for the court to order a repeat of the second round of presidential elections, and Tymoshenko can only challenge the conduct of the central election commission in counting the results.

Yanukovych has called more than once for Tymoshenko to step down as prime minister, a call that he repeated by saying that a defeat in court should be followed by her resignation.

Source:sofiaecho.com/

No comments:

Post a Comment