UKRAINE: Ukraine's feuding presidential candidates are looking to the Supreme Court to resolve their dispute over who won last week's election but its ruling may not be clear-cut enough to end the country's crisis.
The court, which has in the past shown its independence, today examines a submission from the opposition's Viktor Yushchenko asking that his rival's victory in the November 21st run-off be annulled due to fraud. He wants a new vote on December 12th.
But legal experts said the row was more likely to be resolved by political horse-trading than any court ruling.
Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich says his victory was confirmed by the Central Election Commission's count. The prime minister, endorsed by outgoing President Leonid Kuchma and backed by Russia, suggests sending 11,000 complaints to the courts.
"There are so many options, so many nuances, that implementing one of the court's rulings might prove extremely difficult," said Mykola Melnyk of the Supreme Council of Justice, which is overseeing Ukraine's court system. "A ruling could even complicate attempts to resolve the conflict."
Mr Yushchenko's lawyers want the court to invalidate the entire vote or returns in areas subject to mass fraud, mostly in the prime minister's strongholds in eastern Ukraine.
The Supreme Court, Ukraine's highest legal body, consists of about 100 judges and up to 40 may sit today. Their names remain secret until the last minute to guard against pressure on them.
The court's rulings have sometimes been at odds with the line adopted by authorities. Before the first round on October 31st, it rejected a plan by election authorities to open more polling stations in Russia, where Mr Yanukovich was expected to win many votes.
After the first round, it overruled the same officials by ordering disputed results from a region favourable to Mr Yushchenko to be included in the count.
The court initially refused to hear Mr Yushchenko's case.
But last Thursday it temporarily froze the election dispute by agreeing to examine it and barred publication of the results as they stand. That delayed Mr Yanukovich's inauguration, which cannot take place until they appear in the official gazette.
And on Saturday, parliament declared the run-off invalid - a vote by the chamber with no legal force aimed at setting down a moral position ahead of the court hearing.
Mr Yushchenko's aides said the court could simply, on evidence of widespread cheating, declare their candidate the winner.
"I don't think anyone here or anywhere else in the world, including the Kremlin, has any reason to believe that Yushchenko should not be president now," Mr Roman Zvarych, a US-educated member of parliament close to Mr Yushchenko, told reporters. "The Supreme Court can do that basically by invalidating the elections in separate districts where the violations were so systemic and so acute that there are grounds to do this."
Legal experts were not so confident of a quick solution and said the court had no grounds to order a new vote.
"The Supreme Court is a judicial body which settles disputes. Its job is to establish the legality of decisions and actions of the Election Commission ... which are subject to doubt," said Mr Viktor Pohorylko of the Institute of State and Law. "Making proposals is a matter for politicians."
Mr Pohorylko said the court could in fact leave the results in place, paving the way for Mr Yanukovich to be inaugurated.
"If the Commission's actions are deemed lawful, the results are published and the candidate takes the oath of office. I see no grounds for changing the results."