Ukraine presidential race ends, tension high

Ukraine's Yulia Tymoshenko and Viktor Yanukovich head into a final clash for the presidency on Sunday, but the prospect of post-election unrest threatens any quick return to stability, analysts say. Many commentators now predict a narrow victory by Yanukovich over Tymoshenko after a bitter campaign of smears and insults in which each has accused the other of planning electoral fraud.
If the margin of victory is slender on either side on Sunday night, the other camp seems certain to challenge the result. The fiery, 49-year-old Tymoshenko has threatened to bring people out in protest in a new "Orange Revolution" like that of 2004 which was triggered by a rigged election won by Yanukovich.
Yanukovich, 59, gloating at the prospect of a comeback after being cast as the villain in 2004, laughed off the threat. She was positioning herself for defeat, he said. A decisive outcome should reset the ex-Soviet republic's relations with its former imperial master, Russia, which have plummeted under the pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko, and decide the speed of Ukraine's path into the European mainstream.
A return to stability, after five years of infighting between the presidency and the prime minister's office, would help restore investor confidence in the struggling economy, particularly hard hit by the global downturn. It would also help to get back on track quickly a $16.4 International Monetary Fund bail-out programme for the country of 46 million people which has been derailed by Ukraine breaching promises of fiscal restraint.
Challenges to the election result would only delay this. "The likelihood of a close result creates a high probability that the loser of the race would challenge the outcome in court, delaying the inauguration of the new president," said a Eurasia Group note.
Yanukovich, a rough-hewn ex-mechanic from the Donbass mining region, has a support base in the Russian-speaking industrial east and in the south and is backed by wealthy industrialists and interest groups there. He had 10 percent more of the votes than his opponent in the first round on January 17. Tymoshenko, a former gas tycoon, is strong in Ukrainian-speaking western regions and in the centre, but some commentators doubt that she has managed to win over enough of the floating votes to overtake him.