EU alarmed by pre-election turbulence in Ukraine

BRUSSELS - EU diplomats at internal meetings in Brussels and Kiev on Thursday (4 February) raised concerns about the potential collapse of Ukraine's presidential election process.

Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and rival candidate Viktor Yanukovych are due to face off against each other in the second round of the presidential vote on Sunday.

But a last-minute change to the country's electoral law, signed into force on Thursday morning, has seen Ms Tymoshenko threaten to declare the poll invalid and to bring thousands of her supporters onto the streets on Monday.

The legal change means that local election commissions in charge of the country's 38,000 or so voting stations will be able to sign off on the results without the approval of commission members nominated by Ms Tymoshenko.

The new law was pushed through parliament by a coalition including Mr Yanukovych's party and MPs loyal to the outgoing president, Viktor Yushchenko, who has become a bitter personal enemy of Ms Tymoshenko over the past five years.

The move has drawn criticism from international election observers stationed in Ukraine.

"It is not in line with good practice to make last-minute changes to the electoral law, unless this is based on a broad political consensus," Jens Eschenbacher, the spokesman for the ODIHR monitoring mission, told EUobserver. "But in reality, it will not change much if the election officials show up on the day and do their work professionally and in good faith, as they largely did in the first round."

Any deepening of political instability in Ukraine threatens to undermine EU attempts to negotiate a new Association Agreement with the country and to ensure the steady flow of Russian gas exports through its pipelines to EU member states.

"We need to keep an eye on this, as it could be very negative. Tymoshenko has threatened to withdraw from the elections. It's a serious development," an EU diplomat who took part in the Brussels colloquy on Thursday told this website.

"Of course, it is worrying," Spanish foreign minister Miguel Angel Moratinos told MEPs the same day. "We want to work with a legitimately elected government ...towards the political stability of Ukraine."

Tensions in Kiev are set to run high on Friday when the rival camps hold rallies at sites within 500 metres of each other in the Mykhailivska Square area.

Oleksandr Sushko, the director of the Institute of Euro-Atlantic Co-operation in Kiev, said that both sides have contacts with groups, such as football supporters clubs, which could be mobilised to stir up trouble on the streets if need be.

He said the potential for spontaneous violent confrontation is low due to voter apathy about the candidates, however. "People just don't feel that emotional about these elections," he explained.

Others in the analyst community are less sanguine. "The situation in the country is getting very nervous, anything could happen," Volodymyr Yermolenko, from the Internews-Ukraine think tank, said.

The electoral law controversy is the latest in a series of disruptive events in the run-up to the second round.

Last week, MPs loyal to Messrs Yanukovych and Yushchenko voted to remove the pro-Tymoshenko interior minister, Yuriy Lutsenko, from his post. Mr Lutsenko, who would be in charge of policing any street protests, refused to go however, calling himself the "acting" interior minister for now.

Mr Yushchenko also ordered the secret services to take control of the printing house responsible for churning out ballot papers after allegations that Ms Tymoshenko had arranged for 1.5 million extra ballots to be printed in order to falsify votes.

"This is Ukraine!" an EU official said.