KIEV, Ukraine — A revote in Ukraine's bitterly disputed presidential race could be upended because time is running out for printing ballots, opposition leaders said Friday, blaming President Leonid D. Kuchma for the problem.
Under legislation governing the Dec. 26 rematch between Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich and opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, all ballots were to be printed by Ukraine's national mint to protect against fraud.
But after election officials announced that the mint could not finish the job on schedule, parliament passed a law Tuesday authorizing a second plant to print ballots. Kuchma said he was willing to sign the bill, but only in his own office after the lifting of a blockade by pro-Yushchenko demonstrators.
The protesters have demanded that Kuchma accept an earlier parliamentary decision dismissing Yanukovich from office, which he has refused to do. Some have said they do not want to lift the blockade until Yushchenko wins the election, as they expect, and is inaugurated, so the current administration cannot remove documents that might provide evidence of corruption or other crimes.
Yushchenko does not fully control the protesters, who are organized primarily by the student activist group Pora.
While campaigning Friday in the eastern city of Kharkiv, Yushchenko said Kuchma's failure to sign the bill threatened to disrupt the revote, the Russian news agency Itar-Tass reported. At a news conference Thursday, Yushchenko had said, "According to my information, the major task of the Yanukovich team is to make the Dec. 26 election invalid, to make it not happen."
Kuchma's failure to promptly sign the law shows he "does not strongly desire to have the election on Dec. 26," he added.
The balloting was set by Ukraine's Supreme Court when it ruled that a Nov. 21 presidential runoff vote, narrowly won by Yanukovich, was invalid due to fraud. The court and parliament acted under the pressure of massive rallies, some drawing more than 100,000 protesters, that were held for 17 consecutive days in central Kiev to back Yushchenko's claim that he was the real winner.
In parliament Friday, Mykola Tomenko, a leading member of Yushchenko's party, said the opposition might strike back at Kuchma by trying to oust him from the presidency before the revote, on the grounds that his five-year term expired early this month. "Today Kuchma and his team are doing everything not to allow the revote," Tomenko said. He called on the Central Election Commission to print ballots without waiting for the president's signature.
