And yet no one in the media is claiming that the defeated should just get over it or ignore the conspiracy theories circulating the internet. No comments on how exit polls are unreliable (or ignoring the fact that they are). No one is claiming that the results clearly show that the opposition is elitist and out of touch with the real Ukraine. What a difference an ocean makes! In Eastern Europe exit polls indicate potential voting fraud when they don't agree with the vote count and provoke massive direct action to rectify the situation. In America that same disagreement indicates that exit polls are flawed and should be disregarded (and discarded).
The Ukrainian politicians haven't got their manipulation of the voting system down to the fine art the Republicans seem to have. It looks like that there is evidence that there something to be concerned about. In the land of the free, the media is simply ignoring the rising numbers of voting irregularities and fraud claims in the last Presidential election (just as they did in 2000). But this should not detract from the sheer irony of Junta's protests.
Of course the Western media has followed the US government's lead, generally peddling the elections and resulting protests based on a certain ideological presupposition. This explains the protests as a conflict between a popular and brave democrat, Yushchenko, and an unpopular authoritarian Soviet nostalgic, Yanukovych. Any facts which contradict this fairytale are suppressed. For example, any allegations on election fraud committed by Yushchenko-supporting local authorities in western Ukraine are unreported, as is evidence of intimidation against election officials. Ignoring, as the media generally has, these reports of opposition dodgy poll-related activities, the key problem for the government can easily be seen. Unlike the Bush Junta, Ukrainian politicians have used the visible hand rather than the invisible one to fix the election.
Evidence that something was amiss with the US Presidential is being ignored by the mainstream media. For example, it is accepted that the early exit polls (which showed Kerry well ahead) were simply wrong because more Bush voters showed up later in the day despite providing no evidence. And what of the fact that exit polls are rarely wrong, except (apparently) in this case? Or that the chances of Bush achieving the results he did in the three key swing states of Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania with the resulting discrepancies between predicted (exit poll) results and actual vote counts being due to chance or random error being 250 million to 1. Or that in 10 states where there were verifiable paper trails or no electronic machines the final results hardly differed from the initial exit polls. In non-paper-trail states, however, there were significant differences. Or that all the voting machine irregularities so far uncovered seemed to favour Bush.
So how did Bush do it? In Europe citizens count the ballots. In the US it is privatised, with the employees of a highly secretive Republican-leaning company, ES&S, managed every aspect of the 2004 election. This includes everything from registering voters, printing ballots and programming voting machines to tabulating votes. Armed guards are often used to keep the media and members of the public who wished to witness the count at bay. This happens for 60 million voters in 47 states. Most other votes were counted by three other firms that are snugly in bed with the GOP. So four companies control the US vote count. Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia and SAIC and all are extremely close to the Bush Junta. And so Bush ensured his victory by the power of invisible hand.
As the rulers in capitalism have long known, (invisible) market forces shaped by economic power and coercion are much more potent weapons to ensure hierarchy than (visible) state action. The refrain of every apologist of capitalism is that economic coercion/power does not exist, while (of course) ignoring the (extensive) state action needed to create capitalism in the first place and skew the market in favour of the capitalist class. Once those preliminaries are set up, the market will reinforce the power of the capitalists, ensuring that the initial inequalities tend to increase over time. The state can then remain in the background, intervening as required to stabilise the system and keep the working class in its allotted role. Clearly the oligarchs in Ukraine have yet to learn this lesson and their interventions (on both sides) have been crude and more fitting to an earlier age of capitalist development.
It is easy to see why the media frenzy over events in the Ukraine. Yushchenko has strong links with Washington, whose State Department has poured millions into the "free" election and provided the resource for the exit polling. Thus the US is backing a pro-Western free-marketeer who wants Ukraine to join NATO. Guess who wants that to happen? Ultimately, this is not about liberty for the people of the Ukraine. It is about ensuring the same sort of freedom for transnational corporations which the US is failing to do in Iraq. Once that is achieved, people power is quietly forgotten (and repressed when required -- with the implicit support of the West).
So neither side deserves any support. The task in the Ukraine, as elsewhere, is to build a social movement which is run by and for working class people and will defend their interests (political, economic and social) by direct action and solidarity. Only such a movement will ensure that every government in every country is considered as illegitimate and, ultimately, end the farce of a political system which simply results in the picking which member of the rich (mis)rules us in the interests of capital for four or five years.