Ukraine’s opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko is on course for a clear victory in a Boxing Day repeat of the run-off vote for the country’s presidency, according to an opinion poll released on Thursday.
Yushchenko has increased his lead over the prime minister, Viktor Yanukovich, to 14 percentage points, leaving Yanukovich trailing with 37% of the vote, a poll by the Social Monitoring centre said.
At 51%, Yushchenko’s lead has grown since Monday’s television debate, in which the candidates confronted each other for the first time.
A poll by the Razumkov Centre before the debate gave Yushchenko 48% against Yanukovich’s 39%.
A clear victory will ease Yushchenko’s attempts to fend off likely court challenges from Yanukovich, whose team is already preparing lawsuits over alleged irregularities.
Pro-opposition analyst Markian Bylinskyj said: ”The larger the margin the better. The important thing is his percentage in the [pro-government] east of the country — whether he gets more now than the last two rounds now the [state] media controls have been lifted.”
But he added: ”The overall figure will be irrelevant in terms of Yanukovich accepting defeat gracefully.
”The election will probably be contested again in the courts and go down to the wire.”
The polls came as opposition supporters camped out in the centre of Kiev said they would stay on until the inauguration of Yushchenko.
Volodymyr Hropa (30) a railway worker from the western town of Lviv living with his brother in the tent city on Khreshatik Street, said: ”Yushchenko told everyone to go back to work. But we will be here until the inauguration.”
Protesters manning a blockade of the presidential administration said they would pack up only after Yushchenko’s electoral victory had been announced.
Ukrainian prosecutors said on Thursday they hoped to shortly announce the results of their investigation into the poisoning of Yushchenko earlier this year.
”At present we do not have a prime suspect,” spokesman Vyacheslav Astapov said in a telephone interview.
Oleg Ribachuk, Yushchenko’s chief of staff, said there were only 20 laboratories in the world capable of making the rare TCDD poison the presidential candidate was given on September 5.
”Each laboratory’s poison is individually distinct like a perfume,” he added. He said the probable involvement of Russian intelligence agents in the poisoning could prove ”very embarrassing” in future meetings between the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and Yushchenko. – Guardian Unlimited Â