The Orange Revolution
It was both a symbol and a symptom of the revolution that rippled across Ukraine last week. On Thursday, as the presenter of state-controlled UT-1's main morning news program was updating viewers on the Central Electoral Commission's decision to declare Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych the winner of the country's Nov. 21 presidential vote, Natalya Dmitruk, the woman who translates broadcasts into sign language for the deaf, decided to send a very different message. "When the presenter started to read the news," Dmitruk told TIME, "I said: 'I address all deaf viewers. [Challenger Viktor] Yushchenko is our President. Do not believe the Electoral Commission. They are lying.'" In a week filled with extraordinary acts of political protest, Dmitruk's silent rebellion was one of the most defiant.
Independent Ukraine's fourth presidential election since the collapse of the Soviet Union was supposed to reach a final conclusion in the Nov. 21 runoff. On Monday, the Electoral Commission said preliminary tallies showed Moscow's favored candidate, Yanukovych, ahead by three percentage points. But immediately, there were widespread accusations by Ukrainian and foreign monitors of massive fraud that included voter intimidation, physical assaults and the torching of ballot boxes. Yet the state-controlled media, which had backed Yanukovych through the five-month campaign, were reporting no major violations. Convinced the election was being stolen from the rightful victor, supporters of Western-leaning opposition leader Yushchenko poured into Kiev's Independence Square to demand that their man be recognized as the winner. City residents mixed with swarms of protesters from across the country, all of them wearing something orange, the color of Yushchenko's Our Ukraine party. Despite heavy snow and freezing temperatures, the crowd was in a festive mood, eager to embrace Yushchenko's orange revolution against the country's Moscow-backed old guard.
When a mob of students took over part of the nearby Ministry of Education building, staffers served them tea and cookies. Yushchenko, his face disfigured by what he claims was an attempt by government authorities to poison him in September, urged people not to leave the Square until the Electoral Commission's ruling was overturned. "We appeal to citizens of Ukraine to support the national resistance movement," he told the cheering throng. "We should not leave this square until we secure victory."
And his supporters did just that. On Saturday evening, after six days of nonstop, peaceful protests, the state and its candidate were forced to back down. In a nonbinding vote, Parliament declared the poll results invalid and recommended a re-run, perhaps as early as mid-December. This week the Supreme Court, which has final jurisdiction over elections, will examine the fraud allegations and make its own ruling. But the news that Yanukovych would not be inaugurated just yet caused jubilation in Kiev, where hundreds of thousands continued their vigil. "Nobody will stop us now," exulted Vasily, 35, a Kiev engineer. In a race that was fought largely over whether Ukraine would pursue Western-style reforms and closer ties to Europe or stick with state control and a tight relationship with Russia, coming this far was a remarkable achievement for Yushchenko. But even if he does ultimately prevail at the ballot box, that doesn't mean the crisis is over. Ukraine remains a divided and distrustful nation of about 48 million people, where the Russian-speaking, industrialized eastern part of the country backs Yanukovych and the more nationalistic, agricultural west wants Yushchenko.
The two camps are as polarized as the reporting on Dmitruk's morning news broadcast. While Yushchenko's voters celebrated in Kiev and the west, a wave of rallies rolled through Yanukovych strongholds in the east to protest what people there saw as a stolen vote. Political leaders angrily rejected the suggestion to hold another poll and demanded the creation of a new autonomous region. Some even threatened to call for their regions to be annexed by Russia. The electoral impasse could crack the country apart along the acute cultural and political rifts that divide it. "What has happened amounts to the beginning of a cold civil war," says Kiev-based political analyst Konstantin Bondarenko. "The ideological and political division runs along a geographical line: western Ukraine versus eastern Ukraine."
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