Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has withdrawn her appeal against the results of the Ukrainian presidential elections from the Supreme Administrative Court.
Tymoshenko announced the withdrawal of the appeal at a session of the court.
Tymoshenko said she decided to withdraw the appeal because consideration of the appeal made no sense since the court rejected on February 19 her petition to admit as evidence the originals of election documentation from several district election commissions and refused to hear several witnesses.
"The court refused to admit evidence about the inclusion of voters numerous times and inclusion of dead people on the state register of voters. It essentially refused to consider and study the evidence on which the appeal itself is based, thus reducing the Central Electoral Commission’s vote-tallying function to arithmetical addition of votes without confirmation of their justification or authenticity. Under such circumstances, we see no sense in continuing consideration of this case," Tymoshenko said.
After this, the court’s judges retired to consider the petition to withdraw the case.
Tymoshenko later told journalists that the court was biased and expressed the view that the court refused to allow live broadcast of its proceedings because it did not want Ukrainians to see how it refused to admit significant evidence of election rigging.
She said that she would wait for the decision of the court and then decide what to do next.
Mykhailo Okhendovskyi, a member of the Central Electoral Commission and the commission’s lawyer in the appeal case, said after Tymoshenko requested withdrawal of the appeal that it was no longer possible to withdraw the appeal at this stage of the court process.
As Ukrainian News earlier reported, the Supreme Administrative Court has agreed to summon five members of the Central Electoral Commission as witnesses in the appeal case but rejected 13 witnesses.
The court also rejected Tymoshenko’s petition to accept data from the state register of voters regarding inclusion of individual voters on the register numerous times and inclusion of dead people on it.
Tymoshenko filed the appeal with the Supreme Administrative Court on February 16 and asked the court to order a repeat of the second round of the presidential elections.
