Yushchenko attacks, Yanukovich ducks in TV debate ahead of rerun vote

December 21, 2004.

    *** KIEV (AFP) - Ukraine opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko hammered his presidential rival for stealing votes as the two men faced off during their sole televised debate days ahead of a historic re-run election.
    
    
    "There is one reason why we are here -- the election of November 21 was stolen by my opponent and his team," Viktor Yushchenko said, speaking in Ukrainian, in his opening remarks in reference to a vote officially won by his rival but later annulled by the supreme court because of fraud.
    
    
    "You stole three million votes," he told his opponent Viktor Yanukovich, a prime minister who has taken a leave for the campaign.
    
    
    The phrase set the tone for the rest of the nearly two-hour debate -- Yushchenko, confident and on steady moral ground, challenging a Yanukovich who often rambled and at times seemed resigned to defeat.
    
    
    "Yushchenko was 100 percent sure that he will win the election and Yanukovich was 90 percent sure that he is going to lose," said Kostyantyn Kvurt, an analyst in Kiev.
    
    
    The prime-time exchange came days ahead of their December 26 rematch, which was set after the earlier vote embroiled Ukraine in its worst political crisis in 13 years of independence and enflamed tensions between Russia and the West.
    
    
    Throughout the debate Yushchenko, wearing a tie in the orange color of his campaign, reminded people of the "orange revolution" that the opposition organized to protest fraud after the November poll.
    
    
    "They tried to steal our future," he said.
    
    
    Yanukovich, wearing a tie in the blue color of his campaign and speaking mostly in Russian, tried to distance himself from the government he headed for two years and appealed to Yushchenko to join efforts, warning him that his presidency would otherwise lack legitimacy.
    
    
    "Those on (Kiev's central Independence) Square lived this revolution with their souls and I agree with them," Yanukovich said.
    
    
    "We have de facto divided Ukraine," Yanukovich said. "We have to sit down to discuss how to live after the election."
    
    
    The two men should unite "to send this old regime into retirement," otherwise "one of us will be elected president of one part of the country," he said.
    
    
    But Yushchenko was unrelenting.
    
    
    "You are the candidate of the regime," he said.
    
    
    With less than a week to go before a December 26 rerun election, the two rivals are in very different positions than ahead of their November contest -- the pro-Western Yushchenko is now seen as the frontrunner while the Moscow-friendly prime minister is casting himself as an outsider fighting the ruling regime.
    
    
    The crisis over the November vote split the country in two deeply polarized camps, with the Ukrainian-speaking, nationalist west and north supporting Yushchenko, 50, and the Russian-speaking, industrial south and east backing Yanukovich, 54.
    
    
    It also echoed on the world stage, with the European Union (news - web sites) and the United States backing Yushchenko's claims of fraud while Russia backed Yanukovich.
    
    
    
    
    
    Both candidates mentioned the international dimension to their contest Monday night.
    
    "It is high time that the president of an independent Ukraine not be elected by Moscow," Yushchenko said. "The Ukrainian people can chose its president of their own free will."
    
    When Yanukovich made a half-hearted attempt to question the source of financing of Yushchenko's campaign, asking him if he would be in favor of limiting foreign non-government organizations in Ukraine, the opposition leader parried:
    
    "I thought you were going to ask me directly whether I was financed by Russian or American money," he said.
    
    "I have to tell you truthfully, my hands are clean, I have never stolen anything in my life... I have never been convicted, I lead an honest life," Yushchenko said, in a thinly-veiled reference to Yanukovich's two criminal convictions as a youth that he would repeat several times.
    
    At times Yanukovich seemed to nearly admit defeat.
    
    When Yushchenko demanded why Yanukovich had once called his supporters "assholes" and "orange rats," the prime minister replied meekly: "If I've used emotional words, I beg your pardon."
    
    And in his closing remarks Yanukovich said: "I want to apologize to you all that we had irregularities in our campaign."
    
     World - AFP