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                      Vote Energizes Ukraine's Opposition

   by James Brooke

   ''In his Soviet youth, Viktor Yanukovych was a street fighter. Now, he
   is 62 years old and Ukraine's president.
   Vitaly Klitschko is the World Boxing Council's Heavyweight Champion. He
   is 41 and represents Ukraine's new political generation.
   In Sunday's parliamentary vote, Klitschko and his Udar, or Punch,
   party, led the opposition surge in Ukraine, the second-largest nation
   to emerge as a democracy from the Soviet Union.
   With almost all votes counted, Ukraine's three opposition parties drew
   slightly more votes than President Yanukovych's two-party governing
   alliance. The president is to keep narrow control of parliament. But he
   faces new parties and younger faces as the vote recharged Ukraine's
   pro-Western opposition.
   A new generation
   This younger generation is nipping at the president's heels, said
   Volodymyr Gorbach, political analyst for the Institute for
   Euro-Atlantic Cooperation.
   "Now there is a different situation," Gorbach said. "The opposition is
   re-charged. There will be new people, a new opposition, and a new
   quality within the opposition.
   Two years from now, in Ukraine's presidential campaign, Gorbach
   predicts that Klitschko will try to bridge Ukraine's post-Soviet divide
   between East and West.
   Udar, he said, "...is more liberal, and the only party to receive equal
   support from across the country, which is a very good sign."
   ''''One leader was missing Sunday. Yulia Tymoshenko, the president's
   rival in Ukraine's last presidential election, sits in jail. She is
   serving a seven-year jail sentence for abuse of office while prime
   minister.
   Her daughter, Yevhenia, voted. She told reporters that her mother is on
   a hunger strike.
   The Tymoshenko case
   Ms. Tymoshenko's jailing contributed to European observers giving
   Sunday's election failing grades, said Walburga Hapsburg Douglas, head
   of the observer delegation for the Organization for Security and
   Cooperation in Europe.
   "One should not have to go to a prison to hear from leading political
   figures in this country," she said. "Considering the abuse of power and
   the excessive use of money in this election, democratic progress
   appears to have reversed in the Ukraine."
   With Washington backing Europe's negative view of Ukraine's election,
   analyst Gorbach said Mr.Yanukovych is back to square one.
   "The government hoped that international observers would not notice
   that what it was going to do with falsifications," he said. "They
   thought they could get good results and not get criticism. They wanted
   to appear nice and innocent so they could restart relations with
   Europe, again receive loans. The plan failed. Relations were bad then,
   and they are bad now."
   Instead, Yanukovych now faces two new parties - and a younger
   generation - in Ukraine's parliament.
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   [1]http://www.voanews.com/content/vote-energizes-ukraines-opposition/15
   36258.html

References

   1. http://www.voanews.com/content/vote-energizes-ukraines-opposition/1536258.html