KIEV, Ukraine, Dec. 29 -- Ukraine's apparent president-elect, Viktor Yushchenko, called on supporters Tuesday to blockade a building where his opponent in Sunday's runoff, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, had called a meeting of his cabinet for 10 a.m. Wednesday.
"There will be no official meeting of the government," Yushchenko told supporters at Kiev's Independence Square on Tuesday evening, calling for a surprise revival of street action that led to the overturning of Yanukovych's victory in the first runoff but had largely died out. "There cannot be a meeting of the government. Only a honest government should be able to enter."
By 8 a.m. Wednesday, several hundred people had blocked entrances to the building, and large vans were parked in front of them. Members of the crowd banged drums and chanted Yushchenko's name, but there were no signs of any confrontation.
Ihor Ostash, a member of parliament and a senior figure in Yushchenko's campaign, said the call for action was designed to prevent the government from making last-minute deals to privatize state assets or raid government accounts. "It's first of all a matter of principle," Ostash said. "This government is not legitimate because it has been dismissed by the parliament."
The Ukrainian parliament voted to dismiss Yanukovych and his government after the country's Supreme Court threw out the results of the Nov. 21 presidential runoff in which Yanukovych was declared the official winner. But Leonid Kuchma, the outgoing president, refused to certify the decision by parliament, which is required for the decision to become legally binding.
A spokesman for Yanukovych, Oleksandr Tarnavsky, said that any blockade would be "completely illegal" and that the cabinet meeting would go ahead as planned.
Ukraine's Central Elections Commission said Tuesday that vote counting was complete after Sunday's second runoff and that Yushchenko had won with 51.99 percent of the vote, to 44.19 percent for Yanukovych. The remaining voters exercised a right not to vote for either candidate. About 2.3 million votes separated the two.
"We have the result," said Yaroslav Davydovych, head of the commission. "I don't know who can doubt it."
Yushchenko said Tuesday night that he would hold a public inauguration on the square at a date to be announced. The speaker of parliament, Volodymyr Lytvyn, put it between Jan. 11 and Jan. 14.
Yushchenko and his key backers met Tuesday to plan their first 100 days in office. They appear increasingly confident of assuming power, despite Yanukovych's refusal to concede and his promise to challenge Sunday's result in the courts.
Yushchenko faces difficult choices in forming a government, in part because he heads an ideologically disparate coalition. It includes a number of forceful personalities who believe they should be prime minister and differ over how radical the team's program should be, including whether it should take on the country's powerful economic cabals.
"There are some very big egos on his team, and it will be difficult to satisfy everyone," said Vadym Karasiov, director of the Institute of Global Strategies, a research organization in Kiev.
The new president must also attempt to heal regional divisions, confront a large budget deficit and nurture relations with Russia, a key economic partner which openly backed Yanukovych.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who quickly congratulated Yanukovych after the earlier vote, maintained silence Tuesday after the election commission announced Yushchenko's victory, which remains unconfirmed pending Yanukovych's court appeals. Russia continues to smart over the apparent defeat of its preferred candidate after Western election monitors and governments declared the first runoff to be marred by fraud.
A spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Alexander Yakovenko, said Tuesday that observers from former Soviet states were more honest than those from North America and the European Union. Violations in the first runoff "repeated themselves" in Sunday's voting, he said.
In an interview with the Russian newspaper Izvestia, Yushchenko signaled that he wanted to repair relations with the Kremlin. "I must show Russia that our earlier ties were deformed, they were formed by Ukrainian clans," or business groups, Yushchenko said. "We can and must turn this page if we are friends and are prepared to look one another in the eye."
