EVERETT – Ukrainian immigrant Alex Svyatenkiy has no doubt that the Nov. 21 presidential election in his homeland was stolen from the candidate he favors, Viktor Yushchenko.
But the Lynnwood man is wary of the newfound willingness of the officially declared winner, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, to consider new elections.
He’s worried that Yanukovich and his allies will find a way to steal a future election as well.
“I don’t think he’ll give up so easily,” said Svyatenkiy, whose driver-side mirror on his Honda Accord sports an orange ribbon, the symbol of the Ukrainian opposition. “He has a lot of powerful people behind him, and they will try to manipulate any election.”
The Ukrainian supreme court may rule in the next few days whether to overturn the Nov. 21 results, which international observers said were tainted by widespread fraud. Yanukovich is an ally of incumbent President Leonid Kuchma.
In the face of massive street protests in Ukraine and U.S. and European Union pressure, Yanukovich and Kuchma this week agreed to support some type of new elections if the supreme court nullifies the Nov. 21 results, although they disagree with the opposition on key details of the elections.
Svyatenkiy said all of the two to three dozen Ukrainians he knows in Snohomish County who have an opinion on the election support Yushchenko. Other Snohomish County Ukrainians also say Yushchenko would enjoy almost universal backing here if there’s another election.
On the 2000 U.S. Census, nearly 3,800 people in Snohomish County identified themselves as having Ukrainian ancestry, although local Ukrainian residents say the true number could be as high as 15,000.
Svyatenkiy said he was one of about two dozen people from Snohomish County who traveled by bus to San Francisco Nov. 21 to vote at the Ukrainian consulate there. He now wonders whether his vote was really counted. Government officials know that most U.S. immigrants favor Yushchenko, he said.
The immigrants are wary of Yanukovich’s close ties to Russia and support Yushchenko’s pro-Western stands, said Peter Drogomiretskiy of Brier. They also see Yanukovich and Kuchma as corrupt, he said.
There are reports that Kuchma may try to delay a new election and find a more politically palatable candidate to run against Yushchenko. “If there’s a delay, they can have time to reconstruct their power,” Drogomiretskiy said.
Anyone Kuchma would choose “would be a puppet for Kuchma, and more importantly, a puppet for the Russian government,” Drogomiretskiy said.
Victor Litovchenko of Arlington said Kuchma is now open to new elections because he realizes that Yushchenko was a poor candidate.
“Kuchma understands he’s in big danger and will do everything in his power to get someone to allow him to keep control,” Litovchenko said. “I don’t trust him. He’s playing games.”
The only fair solution, Litovchenko said, would be a rematch between Yanukovich and Yushchenko.
Alla Geychenko of Everett said she worries that tension over the election will worsen divisions between eastern Ukraine, which has strong ties to Russia and backed Yanukovich, and western Ukraine, which supported Yushchenko.
“I’m really afraid they’re going to start a civil war,” said Geychenko. She was born in eastern Ukraine but her parents grew up in the west.
Svyatenkiy also worries about what will happen in the coming weeks. But he’s amazed that the opposition has achieved so much. Kuchma and Yanukovich would never have agreed to consider new elections if Ukrainians hadn’t taken to the streets in protest, he said.
The opposition’s success will only embolden it further, he said. The Ukrainian people will not let Kuchma and his supporters steal the next election, Svyatenkiy predicted.
“I think democracy will win,” Svyatenkiy said. “People are waking up. They used to think, ‘Oh, my voice won’t count.’ Now people see their voice is working.”
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