MOSCOW, Dec. 25 -- After a flawed presidential runoff election, massive but peaceful demonstrations, a Supreme Court decision that threw out the vote results and revelations that the opposition candidate had been poisoned, Ukrainians return to the polls Sunday for what may be the decisive act in this political drama.
Viktor Yushchenko, the opposition candidate, will again face Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, who was declared the winner in voting on Nov. 21 runoff whose outcome was said by international observers to have been influenced by widespread fraud. In what came to be known as the "Orange Revolution," a name drawn from the opposition's campaign color, hundreds of thousands of people poured into the streets of Kiev, the capital, demanding that the vote be tossed aside.
Yushchenko warned against election violence.
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The winner of Sunday's election will face a difficult challenge in governing. Not only will he have to address the yearnings of a popular movement sparked by the pro-Yushchenko protests, but also the deep social and political divisions that the campaign has brought to the surface.
"Ukrainians have surprised themselves, and whatever happens I don't think we can ever go back to the old days of governing by an elite for that elite," Volodymyr Polokhalo, editor of the Political Thought journal, said in a recent interview. "People have found a democratic voice, and it's not under any one person's control."
In a public opinion poll conducted by the Kiev-based Razumkov Center for Economic and Political Studies, 53.3 percent of respondents supported Yushchenko and 41.7 percent backed Yanukovych. The survey had a margin of error of 2.3 points.
Even President Vladimir Putin of Russia, who found himself in a standoff with the United States and the European Union over his support for Yanukovych, now speaks as if Yushchenko will win. And Yanukovych has complained bitterly about his former allies, including the outgoing president Leonid Kuchma, who Yanukovych said abandoned him in the face of demonstrations and international pressure.
In a televised address Friday, Kuchma said that "both sides succumbed to the temptation to attribute to oneself only glory and to accuse one's political rival of all sins, both unintentional and fictitious." He said that regardless of who wins, Yushchenko and Yanukovych must "find a force in themselves to give a hand of cooperation to each other. The Ukrainian people . . . need this civil act."
But the harsh rhetoric and uncertainties about the electoral process have continued into the last days of the campaign.
On Saturday, the Constitutional Court overturned part of a new law that restricted at-home voting by people with disabilities, a mechanism that monitors had said was a source of fraud in the previous round.
"The Constitutional Court has made the final touches so that the election can take place according to the constitution," the court chairman, Mykola Selivon, told reporters. "Now, no one will be able to say that the elected president is illegitimate or elected unconstitutionally."
Yushchenko, who doctors determined was poisoned in September with dioxin, leaving him disfigured, warned the government against instigating violence.
"I think it will be a colossal mistake on the part of the current regime if even one drop of blood is shed in the coming days," he said at a news conference Friday.
Hryhoriy Omelchenko, a Yushchenko supporter in parliament, recently charged that Yanukovych backers , including former convicts, were being organized into groups of 30 to spark violence in Kiev on election night and succeeding days. He said they had acquired weapons from Russia's Black Sea fleet based in the Ukrainian port city of Sevastopol.
Defense Minister Volodymyr Kuzmuk called the statements "provocative in character." Sergei Markov, a Kremlin political consultant who worked in Ukraine, said in an interview that the charge was "a lie and a provocation."
Thousands of international observers, including hundreds of Ukrainian expatriates who received hurried training, have streamed into the country to monitor the election.
On Friday, the last day of campaigning, Yanukovych attended rallies in Kiev and in the western city of Uzhhorod.
"I believe the Ukrainian people will choose freedom," he said, echoing his recent theme that a Yushchenko victory would mean Ukraine was in thrall to foreign interests. "The Ukrainian people will be the masters of their land. I want my children and grandchildren to live in an independent country."
Voters expressed the hope that the new results would usher in calm.
"I find it hard to believe that everything will just stop, but I really want peace," said Kostiantyn Kravchenko, 27, a computer programmer. "I hope that's what everyone wants."
