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Yanukovych promises new destiny for Ukraine
Source: Agencies |
February 26, 2010, Friday
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VIKTOR Yanukovych was inaugurated as Ukrainian president in Kiev yesterday, six years after massive protests over vote fraud got his first election victory tossed out. This time he promised to make Ukraine a European nation outside of any bloc.
Yanukovych took the oath of office in the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian parliament that has been the scene of intense maneuvering over the future of his rival Yulia Tymoshenko, who aims to stay on as prime minister.
Yanukovych narrowly defeated Tymoshenko in a presidential election runoff on February 7. Tymoshenko alleges vote fraud, but she has dropped her court case on the issue. International observers had called the 2010 vote free and fair.
Tymoshenko led the 2004 Orange Revolution protests that paved the way for a rerun of the fraud-tainted 2004 presidential poll in which Yanukovych was declared winner. He lost a revote to Viktor Yushchenko.
Yanukovych, whose margin of victory was only 3.5 percentage points, enters office with a shaky mandate and faces severe national challenges. He inherits an economy crippled by the global financial crisis and a nation whose political loyalties are polarized. He has broad support in the Russian-speaking east of the country, but in the Ukrainian-speaking west, he lost in virtually every region to Tymoshenko.
The new president promised to carve a unique geopolitical path for Ukraine. "I think that the state can not only be saved from a social-economic collapse, but can quickly be put on the path of accelerated development," Yanukovych said in his inauguration address. He viewed Ukraine's destiny as being "a European state outside of any bloc."
Yanukovych took the oath of office in the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian parliament that has been the scene of intense maneuvering over the future of his rival Yulia Tymoshenko, who aims to stay on as prime minister.
Yanukovych narrowly defeated Tymoshenko in a presidential election runoff on February 7. Tymoshenko alleges vote fraud, but she has dropped her court case on the issue. International observers had called the 2010 vote free and fair.
Tymoshenko led the 2004 Orange Revolution protests that paved the way for a rerun of the fraud-tainted 2004 presidential poll in which Yanukovych was declared winner. He lost a revote to Viktor Yushchenko.
Yanukovych, whose margin of victory was only 3.5 percentage points, enters office with a shaky mandate and faces severe national challenges. He inherits an economy crippled by the global financial crisis and a nation whose political loyalties are polarized. He has broad support in the Russian-speaking east of the country, but in the Ukrainian-speaking west, he lost in virtually every region to Tymoshenko.
The new president promised to carve a unique geopolitical path for Ukraine. "I think that the state can not only be saved from a social-economic collapse, but can quickly be put on the path of accelerated development," Yanukovych said in his inauguration address. He viewed Ukraine's destiny as being "a European state outside of any bloc."
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