Confirming Armando's earlier
exit poll story, the
New York Times reports that Ukrainian opposition candidate Viktor Yuschenko has won his country's re-vote election, 52-44. (Over 98% of the vote has been counted; a final tally is due soon.)
There were apparently no independent reports of the kind of fraud we saw last time around, when Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich "won" by a 49-47 margin. To be sure, the Yanukovich camp has been complaining about voter intimidation, but, according to the NYT, "the Ukrainian Committee of Voters, which deployed 10,000 observers, issued a statement late Sunday in which is said it had not documented the kinds of 'massive falsifications' seen in the first two rounds."
So major props to the Ukrainians for pulling this election off successfully. For a country with a very short democratic history, this is an impressive turnabout from November's badly marred vote, and in barely a month's time.
As for Yuschenko, maybe now he'll cooperate more fully with the authorities investigating his mysterious dioxin poisoning. And, of course, now is probably a good time to buy a copy of Taegan Goddard's book.