KIEV (Reuters) - Ukraine's Yulia Tymoshenko threatened on Thursday to call people onto the streets to mount a second "Orange Revolution" even fiercer than that of 2004 if rival Viktor Yanukovich tried to rig Sunday's presidential vote.
The February 7 runoff election pits Prime Minister Tymoshenko against opposition leader Yanukovich, bringing to a climax a bitter campaign in which each side has accused the other of planning to rig the vote and of lying to the electorate.
Tymoshenko, speaking at a Kiev news conference, renewed her charge that Yanukovich's Regions Party had tried to cheat in the election by means of a last-minute change to electoral rules pushed through parliament on Wednesday.
"In the event of us not managing ... to ensure that the expression of the people's will and the results of this will are held in an honest way we will call people out," Tymoshenko said.
"There is absolutely no doubt about it," she declared.
"If Yanukovich wants an honest fight, we are ready to compete with him, but if he seeks to cheat, we will be able to rebuff him in a way he has never seen, even in 2004," she said.
The Regions Party, in a statement released shortly before Tymoshenko spoke, said her "hysterical statements ... are nothing else than a bare-faced lie."
The election result will be crucial for the ex-Soviet republic's future relations with its former Soviet master, Russia, and its place in Europe.
It should also produce a government capable of resuming talks with the International Monetary Fund over a suspended $16.4 billion bail-out programme for the struggling economy.
The fiery Tymoshenko led mass street protests in 2004 against the election of Yanukovich in what was deemed to have been a rigged poll.
Subsequently, a court ordered a third round of voting which was won by President Viktor Yushchenko, then Tymoshenko's ally.
Tymoshenko renewed an appeal to Yushchenko, who has since become her political foe, to use his presidential powers to block Wednesday's parliamentary move amending electoral rules.
"I believe that the president's signature on this law will be a death sentence to democracy and honest elections in Ukraine," she said.
(Reporting by Natalya Zinets and Dmitry Solovyov; Writing by Richard Balmforth; editing by Tim Pearce)
Comments