Bringing Out The Big Guns

The Ukrainian opposition has Lech Walesa on its side:

Deputy economy minister Oleh Hayduk resigned in protest of the fraudulent vote count in the Ukrainian election, Ukrainian News reported.

“When the European Union doesn’t recognize the election results, what kind of European integration can we talk about?” Hayduk said Nov. 25 on the Channel 5 television station.

“That’s my position as a citizen. I wrote a declaration of my resignation yesterday, and now I’m confirming it,” he said.

Hayduk, 39, has been a deputy economy minister since April 21 of this year.

The news was read to the hundreds of thousands of protestors thronging Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) on this third full day of protests against Ukraine’s Nov. 21 run-off presidential vote, which has been widely condemned as fraudulent. Solidarity leader and the first post-communist Polish president Lech Walesa also addressed the crowd, which was in high spirits as it gathered under blue skies on this clear, windless day.

Much of central Kyiv is now a solid block of protestors, most bedecked in orange, the signature color of opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko. A carnival atmosphere predominates.

Estimates place the crowd at up to a million.

Add to Walesa the esteemed name of Vaclav Havel:

PRAGUE (Reuters) - Vaclav Havel, former Czech president and leader of the country's 1989 "Velvet Revolution" that overthrew Communist rule, has urged Ukrainians to keep up their protests against a disputed presidential election.

A third day of mass protests began on Wednesday demanding that Ukraine's opposition leader, Viktor Yushchenko, be installed as president after a weekend poll they said was fraudulent.

"All respected domestic and international organisations agree that your demands are justified. Therefore I wish you strength, endurance, courage and fortunate decisions," Havel said in a statement from Taipei where he was travelling.

Havel, a former anti-communist dissident and the first president after the 1989 fall of communism, told Ukrainians that long years or decades of their future were at stake.

Once he's done pumping up the troops, Vaclav needs to head to New York and take over for Kofi. Can you imagine the United Nations headed by Havel? That would be awesome.