Ukraine's jailed former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko launched a hunger strike on Monday to protest against alleged vote-rigging in favour of President Viktor Yanukovich's party in a weekend election, her lawyer said.
Exit polls and partial results from Sunday’s vote showed
Yanukovich’s Party of the Regions would, with help from
long-time allies, win more than half the seats in the 450-member
assembly.
The united opposition bloc, which includes Tymoshenko’s
Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party, was second with about 100
seats, according to preliminary estimates.
But Tymoshenko, who had warned before the vote that the
Regions’ victory would lead to “dictatorship”, does not accept
the figures, her lawyer Serhiy Vlasenko said.
“Yulia Volodymyrovna (Tymoshenko) has gone on a hunger
strike in protest against vote-rigging,” Vlasenko said by
telephone from the city of Kharkiv where Tymoshenko is being
treated for back trouble in a state-run hospital.
“This was not an election, this was total vote-rigging”.
A court last October sentenced Tymoshenko, 51, to seven
years in prison, ruling she had abused her powers as prime
minister when she forced through a 2009 gas deal with Russia.
She has denied any wrongdoing.
The European Union and the United States have condemned her
jailing as an example of selective justice and Brussels has
shelved landmark deals on free trade and political association
with Kiev over the issue.
Tymoshenko’s allegations of electoral fraud on Monday
contrasted with other opposition politicians, including those
from her own bloc, who were reserved in their judgment.
Western observers, who called the election a step backwards
for Ukraine, criticised misuse of administrative resources,
biased media coverage and opaque campaign finances rather than
the voting and counting process.
Tymoshenko, a leader of the 2004 Orange Revolution which
derailed Yanukovich’s first bid for the presidency, was detained
in August 2011 and has been in hospital since May after
complaining about chronic back problems.
She faces tax evasion and fraud charges in a separate trial,
delayed because of her poor health, while challenging the
initial conviction in the European Court of Human Rights.
