Reuters - 01.12.2005

Election Loser Again Stalls Inauguration in Ukraine

KIEV (Reuters) - The loser of Ukraine's presidential election unveiled yet another tactic on Wednesday to stall his opponent's inauguration by delaying an appeal with the Supreme Court.

Moscow-backed former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, who lost last month's election by nearly eight percent of the vote, has managed to keep liberal Viktor Yushchenko from taking power for more than two weeks by challenging the outcome at each turn.

The Central Election Commission finally declared Yushchenko the winner on Monday night and his camp hoped he would be inaugurated as president this week. But that cannot take place until the result is published in an official newspaper.

The Supreme Court barred the paper from publishing the result until it ruled on a final challenge.

Yanukovich's team, which acknowledges it has no hope of winning an appeal, had promised to deliver the challenge to the Court on Wednesday. But the former prime minister's representative announced at the last minute that the appeal was not ready and instead would be delivered on Thursday.

The court has quickly thrown out all of Yanukovich's appeals so far. But it cannot dismiss an appeal until he submits it.

The final deadline to submit a challenge is seven days from the election commission's announcement, which could allow Yanukovich to hold up the inauguration until late next week.

Yushchenko has said his opponent's challenges are "torturing the nation." But publicly his supporters kept their frustration in check.

"We are looking at the situation calmly. They have a right to do it," Yuri Klyuchkovsky, Yushchenko's representative to the Central Election Commission, told Reuters.

"As a representative of another presidential candidate I do not want to give any political judgment on the situation. People can look at it and draw their own conclusions."