Yulia Tymoshenko will contest the presidential runoff results in court if reports of extensive voting procedure breaches in several regions of the country prove true, a deputy leader of her bloc said on Tuesday.
With 99.91% of the vote counted, opposition leader Viktor Yanukovych has a 3.47% lead over Tymoshenko in Ukraine's presidential polls runoff, the country's election authority said on Tuesday. Yanukovych now has 48.95% of the vote, followed by Tymoshenko with 45.48%.
A simple majority is needed in the presidential runoff election.
"Yesterday we made the decision to contest results in separate electoral districts, and if the courts back us up, we will call the overall runoff results into question," deputy leader of Tymoshenko's bloc, Elena Shustik, said.
Tymoshenko earlier vowed to take her supporters to the street if she was not satisfied with the election. She postponed twice a news conference scheduled for Monday, finally moving it to Tuesday.
Referring to its sources, Ukrainskaya Pravda said Tymoshenko held a meeting of her parliamentary bloc late on Monday, where she said that she would "never recognize the legitimacy of Yanukovych's victory."
The prime minister also instructed her lawyers to prepare to contest the runoff results, and said that a third round of voting could be held as an option, the Ukrainian online paper said.
However, experts believe that Tymoshenko does not stand a chance as Yanukovych's lead is too large.
"It will be virtually impossible to prove Yanukovych wrong, he leads Tymoshenko by some 800,000 votes," a Ukrainian political expert told RIA Novosti on Tuesday.
KIEV, February 9 (RIA Novosti)
