Timoshenko Upstages Yuschenko

Ukraine's dismissed prime minister seized the limelight from President Viktor Yushchenko a year after Orange Revolution protests with an electrifying appeal on Tuesday to join forces in next year's parliamentary elections.

Both Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko, the premier he sacked in September, told supporters in Kiev's Independence Square that only a united team of reformers could win the March 2006 election to a parliament led by a prime minister with expanded powers.

But Tymoshenko's impassioned 20-minute address, delivered without notes, clearly won over a crowd of well more than 100,000 marking last year's mass protests which helped propel the president to victory in the re-run of a rigged poll.

"I am certain that just as we supported Viktor Yushchenko in the presidential election, we must now unite to elect a prime minister who will embody everything we fought for," Tymoshenko, tears welling in her eyes, told the crowd.

"I want to dismiss all the rumors that it is Tymoshenko versus Yushchenko. This cannot be so, because this is the president that you and I helped bring to power. We did it together."

Tymoshenko's speech on what the liberal administration has proclaimed "Freedom Day" was clearly aimed at the March election campaign.

It also sought to justify her eight months in charge of a government that blew apart after splitting into rival camps, each accusing the other of corruption.

As snow fell on the square, she told supporters: "My heart is with you. If it didn't work the first time, it will next time round. We cannot stop with things half finished."

Timoshenko continues her spiel here. She's a shrewd political operator at times. Can't say that she's my favorite kinda Ukrainian woman, but she definitely seems to know how to play to her constituency. She's too rabid at times, but right now, West Ukraine is ascendant and East is choking on its own internal problems.