All that Ukraine's ambiguous figure of a president has to do to go down in history as a hero is peacefully turn over power to Viktor Yushchenko

his re-election in 1999 because he was the only realistic alternative to the Communists; and we condemned what looked like his rigged constitutional referendum in 2000. We’ve ascribed to him the credit for Ukraine’s strong recent economic performance, and we’ve called for his resignation, in 2001, during the Gongadze affair.

In general, we’ve tried to push Kuchma to ensure that Ukraine does what the rhetoric of so many of its politicians says it intends to do: achieve European living standards and a Western-style political culture, and become a decent member of the international community.

Now it’s all or nothing for Kuchma. He’s got the chance to define himself forever as either an ultimately positive force for Ukraine, or as another Eastern European political thug hell-bent on dragging his country down to his own standards. He can either walk away from power cleanly, ceding it rightfully to opposition presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko, who clearly won the election, or he can continue to connive in the fraudulent election of his heir and instrument Prime Minster Viktor Yanukovych, thus doing irremediable damage to Ukraine.

At this point, after the authorities have organized months of political intimidation, media disinformation campaigns and a thousand other almost daily dirty tricks designed to steal from Yushchenko an election that no credible observer can believe he would have lost fairly, Ukraine’s pretensions to responsible international citizenship have been exposed as a sham.

As the Post goes to press on this tense, snowy Nov. 24, up to a million opposition protestors are clogging Maidan Nezalezhnosti and the remainder of downtown Kyiv, to protest the Central Election Commission’s corrupt announcement this afternoon that Yanukovych officially won the election. Thousands of bused-in “Yanukovych supporters” have been moving in ominous columns toward the Central Election Commission and the city center, raising the specter of government-sanctioned violence. Unrest has spread to other cities, notably the passionately pro-Yushchenko west, and the country is at a standstill. All credible international observers have called the election a sham.

Kuchma, strangely, is best situated to redeem the situation and bring this country back from the brink. If he bows to the people’s will and transfers power to Yushchenko, all his numerous sins over the years will be forgiven. He’ll be lionized – as Boris Yeltsin was when he peacefully ceded power – as an exemplar for Ukrainian politicians, and the father of a new era in his country’s history.

Is President Kuchma, as Yeltsin was – and as Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze was a year ago, stepping down in the face of his country’s 2003 “Rose Revolution” – a courageous enough man to do what’s best for his country, as opposed to what’s best for the tycoons and thugs surrounding him?

We’ll believe it when we see it. But we hope the answer’s yes.