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Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily on Friday claims that Global Information System sources in the Ukraine have found a pattern of fraud and manipulation, traceable to groups supported by George Soros, in support of the opposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko.

The evidence alleged by this report contradicts the generally accepted story in the West that electoral fraud of a massive scale was attempted in support of the candidacy of outgoing Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich.

GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs staff indicated that all of the alleged "exit poll" reporting during the second stage of the election, on November 21, 2004, was fabricated: there were, in fact, no exit polls allowed at the polling stations, so all the reporting claiming to have evidence based on the alleged overwhelming support in exit polls for Yuschenko was completely fabricated.

...Moreover, opinion polling nationwide during the run-up to the election showed that Prime Minister Yanukovich -- not European Union- and Soros-backed Yuschenko -- would win the election convincingly, but not surprisingly: Yanukovich's support base was the Ukrainian Orthodox Christian, Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox, and Russian communities, largely centered on the East of Ukraine, and these groups make up some 60 percent of the population. Yuschenko's supporters, the Uniates (Ukrainian Catholics) of Western Ukraine, constitute only some 40 percent of the population. The demographics -- and the close alignment of each population group to each candidate -- meant that a Yuschenko win would have been extremely unlikely, and the late public opinion polling in the week before the election confirmed this.

In the day or so before the election, a well-orchestrated team of Yuschenko supporters put in place their protest machinery, ready to denounce the election results.

...The monitors reported that, in fact, minor problems noted in the first round of the election had been scrupulously corrected by the second round, and that, by and large, there was not the widespread fraud which the Yuschenko team claimed.
["Extent of Soros-Linked Involvement Becoming Clear in Attempting to Seize Ukraine Elections for Yuschenko," Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily, December 3, 2004.]

Though the support of George Soros on one side of any political issue tempts me to take the other, I remain agnostic, for the time being, on the factual issues surrounding the polling in the Ukraine.

Labels: Defense and Foreign Affairs Daily, George Soros, Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko