KIEV, November 4 (RIA Novosti) – Ukraine’s United Opposition led by imprisoned opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko’s Fatherland party has called on its supporters to gather in the Ukrainian capital on Monday to protest against the alleged falsification of the vote count at the country’s parliamentary election.
“The united opposition is calling on all opposition forces and all those who are not indifferent to the country’s destiny to come to the Central Electoral Commission building and protect their vote,” read a statement issued by Front Zmin, part of the United Opposition.
With nearly 100 percent of the vote counted, President Viktor Yanukovych’s ruling Party of Regions has received 30 percent, while the United Opposition has pulled in 25.5 percent.
Anatoliy Hrytsenko, a former defense minister and number three on the United Opposition party list, called on party leaders to declare the polls invalid.
Former world boxing champion Vitaly Klichko's Udar party also said it may refuse to recognize the election results.
The party also called on the country’s central election commission “not to announce the results of the polls, which are falsified and do not reflect the true results of the citizens’ vote.”
The Ukrainian opposition claimed numerous vote violations during the ex-Soviet republic’s October 28 parliamentary elections.
International observers from NATO and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, among others, condemned the vote earlier this week as a “step backward” for Ukraine’s democracy.
“Ukrainians deserve better than these elections,” Andreas Gross, head of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe’s (PACE) observer mission, told reporters in Kiev on Monday.
The observers criticized what they believed to be the abuse of administrative resources, a lack of media freedom during the campaign season, and the opaque campaign finances of pro-government “independent” and Party of Regions candidates.
