Protagonists of Orange Revolution Vie Again

"We are so sick and tired," said Marusia Garaschenko, 65, a pensioner who lives in the village of Zaruddia, about 60 miles west of Kiev. "I don't know who to vote for. All I want is for Ukraine to be more prosperous."

Yushchenko addressed such sentiments this week on Ukrainian television.

"Ukrainians, please cheer up," he said. "Ukraine has a great chance on September 30, and it must use it. There is no alternative to democracy in the country."

After less than a year in government following the Orange Revolution, Yushchenko and Tymoshenko, his most prominent ally and onetime prime minister, fell out amid accusations of corruption.

The Orange split opened the way for Yanukovych to become prime minister after his party received a plurality of votes in parliamentary elections in March 2006. Yushchenko reluctantly nominated his arch-rival for the job four months later.

Since then, Yushchenko and Yanukovych have clashed bitterly over the division of powers between the executive and legislative branches, a standoff that threatened to become violent when Yushchenko dissolved parliament this spring and called the early elections. It took three presidential decrees to finally set Sunday's election date because the Party of Regions resisted the president's directive.

Yushchenko and Tymoshenko appear to have reconciled. The leader of Yushchenko's Our Ukraine party, Yuri Lutsenko, told several thousand supporters at a rally Friday night in Kiev that "we have signed an agreement with Tymoshenko's bloc" to form a new government.

Nonetheless, there will probably be a long period of tough bargaining between the apparent allies should they win enough seats to form a government. Yushchenko is likely to seek some institutional control over Tymoshenko to guarantee that her second incarnation as prime minister is more successful than her first.

"We have learned from our mistakes," said Mykola Katerynchuk, head of the European Platform for Ukraine, part of the coalition running under the Our Ukraine banner. "The president has renewed his team."

Both Yushchenko and Tymoshenko draw most of their support from the Ukrainian-speaking western and central parts of the country. They endorse pro-Western positions -- including increasingly close ties with NATO -- that would distance the country from Russia.

Yanukovych, whose base is in the Russian-speaking east, has said NATO membership should be subject to a referendum, where it would almost certainly be defeated. He also wants to make Russian a second official language, a deeply emotional issue in the linguistically divided country.

Opinion polls give the Our Ukraine coalition about 13 percent of the vote and Tymoshenko's bloc roughly 23 percent.

Yanukovych's party has the support of about 33 percent of likely voters and, in alliance with the Communists, is also within striking distance of power, according to opinion polls. But the right to nominate the prime minister lies with the president, and "Yushchenko will resist to the end" before nominating Yanukovych, according to Karasiov.

Yushchenko, he said, might accept a Party of Regions government led by someone other than Yanukovych in tandem with an agreed package of constitutional reforms to clarify the division of powers.

"If our victory is so obvious, so clear to everyone, it means that Yanukovych has a big chance to be elected to prime minister. If less, it opens room for compromise," Kozhara said. "But Yanukovych remains the most popular politician in this country."