The man defeated by President Viktor Yushchenko in the "Orange Revolution" denounced the Ukrainian leader's rule on Friday as impotent and backed parliament's dismissal of his cabinet ahead of a key election, Reuters reported. Viktor Yanukovich, the Kremlin's preferred candidate in the 2004 presidential campaign won by Yushchenko after mass protests, heads the party leading opinion polls for the March parliamentary election. Ukraine is locked in a constitutional crisis with parliament and Yushchenko accusing each other of violating the constitution after the government was sacked over a contentious gas deal. Yushchenko, his allies trailing in polls, says this week's vote was unconstitutional and wants it retracted. In a television interview, he said it was parliament, elected four years ago, that was out of touch with public opinion and again criticised constitutional changes in effect since the New Year boosting parliament's powers at his expense. Yanukovich said he was ready to take power after the elections in March. "We have set ourselves the task of taking power," he told a news conference. "In one year, the current administration has showed only weakness. It has proved it is inefficient and unable to manage the state." Yanukovich was the handpicked successor of ex-President Leonid Kuchma, reviled by protesters who massed in Kiev to denounce an election later ruled invalid by the Supreme Court. He is still heavily backed by Ukraine's Russian-speaking industrial east. A survey issued on Friday by the Democratic Initiatives Fund and the Ukrainian Sociology Service put Yanukovich's Regions Party in the lead with a 25 percent rating. A group led by Yulia Tymoshenko, sacked as prime minister by Yushchenko last September after months of infighting, lies second with 13.6 percent. Yushchenko's Our Ukraine was third with just over 11 percent. Yushchenko said forces of the past held sway in parliament. "These are not forces which can function in a democracy which is starving them of their oxygen. We have a parliament which does not correspond to society's political make-up," he said in an interview to four Ukrainian TV channels. "This is the main problem. People who belong to this or that political force long ago lost moral support from voters." Yushchenko, who has suggested new constitutional rules could be put to a referendum, said: "With such changes and procedures the country will have a difficult future." Parliamentary speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn said the assembly, often fractious and unpredictable, was unlikely to back down from its decision to sack the government. "I think both the president and the government understand that nobody will agree to the language of ultimatums," said Lytvyn, who helped resolve legal rows over the 2004 poll. Parliament, however, responded to Yushchenko's request to sit for another week to debate laws seen as critical to the economy. It had originally planned to go into recess on Friday. Parliament, its members clearly keen to curry voters' favour, passed the censure motion to denounce a deal under which Ukraine will pay almost double for Russian gas imports. Russian gas giant Gazprom had originally sought a fourfold increase. Tymoshenko, who backed Yushchenko during the 2004 protests, joined forces with Yanukovich and his allies to bring down the government. Yushchenko can count on no more than a third of votes in the 450-seat parliament at the moment.
