In the past three weeks there hasn’t been a single weekend without an opposition rally in Kyiv. The past Saturday was no exception, as tens of thousands of Kyivans flocked to the main city square for the You Can’t Fool the People rally, with the organizers reporting an attendance of 100,000 versus a tally of 10,000 reported by the uniformed services. The rally took its usual course. The sea of bright orange flags and flyers was interspersed with yellow-and-black banners of the PORA youth organization and slogans like “We have liberated the capital, Donetsk comes next!” This time, however, the rally showed two fundamental differences in the lineup of speakers and their rhetoric. Aside from his usual entourage, Yushchenko was accompanied by Yuliya Tymoshenko and Oleksandr Moroz.
As for the rhetoric, it was unusually specific and quite harsh. Viktor Yushchenko began his speech with an offer “to speak about the truth; about what happened on the night of October 31 to November 1.” He spoke about a hidden computer server that intercepted voting results on their way from territorial election committees to the Central Election Committee and made it possible to tamper with these results. He displayed blank protocols, which have been stamped and signed by all election committee members.
The Our Ukraine leader urged those present “not to believe the deceitful Central Election Committee under any circumstances.” Opposition representatives have presented the CEC with the results of their parallel vote count, which shows that the “people’s candidate” has won the first round of the presidential elections with a symbolic 39.77% of the popular vote.
Mr. Yushchenko also spoke about the drafting of a socioeconomic development program that would make a difference for every citizen only a year from now and about his intention to form a “government of public trust.” “It makes no difference to me under what political banner any person walks or what badge he wears. My main requirements are decency and professionalism.” He went on to threaten oligarchs with partial re-privatization, primarily of Kryvorizhstal steel mill, and promised to impose a ban on sales of agricultural lands until 2008.
Ms. Tymoshenko received an especially vociferous welcome from the crowd. “Do not fear the authorities; they have never managed to frustrate our plans. After the first round we conducted a thorough analysis of all their shenanigans and have found an antidote to each of them,” she said, calling on her supporters to do three simple things: to explain “with love and patience” to at least three persons who voted for the “wrong” candidate who they should support in the runoff; to prevent vote rigging; and, finally “not to expect to receive anything from the [Yushchenko] headquarters,” but instead “buy at least a little of the cheapest orange-colored cloth, cut it into stripes, and tie them onto everything around you.” As if to give greater weight to her words, hundreds of orange balloons took to the skies above Kyiv. A whole bunch of them even caught on the top of the Independence Monument.
