KIEV, Feb. 8 – Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko on Monday faced mounting pressure to concede defeat to opposition leader Viktor Yanukovych after international observers judged Sunday’s presidential election as free and fair.

With 99.44% of ballots counted, Yanukovych was ahead of Tymoshenko 48.81% vs. 45.61%, according to the Central Election Commission. This margin cannot be closed even if all remaining ballots favored Tymoshenko.

"Yesterday's vote was an impressive display of democratic elections,” Joao Soares, president of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe parliamentary assembly, said Monday. “For everyone in Ukraine, this election was a victory.”

The international observer team called on both candidates to accept the results.

"It is now time for the country's politicians to listen to the people's verdict and make sure that the transition of power is peaceful and constructive," Soares said.

But that’s where the problem begins.

Tymoshenko on Monday cancelled two press conferences as she met her lawyers and campaign staff in desperate brainstorm meetings considering legal options, including challenging the election in courts.

At one of the meetings, Tymoshenko apparently told her staff that she will “never accept legitimacy of Yanukovych’s victory with the election like this,” Ukrayinska Pravda reported, citing a person familiar with the situation.

Tymoshenko apparently ordered her lawyers, led by Andriy Portnov, to start the legal process of challenging the election results in courts.

The legal challenge to the election will probably not succeed as most international election monitors praised the vote as fair and honest, dashing Tymoshenko’s claims that this was “one of the dirtiest” presidential elections.

But the legal challenge may delay Yanukovych’s inauguration, and transition of power, by two or three weeks, respectively delaying the restart of a $16.4 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund.

Boris Kolesnikov, a senior member of the Yanukovych campaign, said the campaign will defend the vote by citing the judgment from the international election monitors.

“For us the most important thing is that all representatives of the OSCE, CIS, PACE and NATO judged the election absolutely democratic and legitimate,” Kolesnikov said. “This is an important indicator.”

Hanna Herman, another member of the Yanukovych campaign, said Tymoshenko must finally concede the defeat.

“If she finds courage and strength to do what a democrat, a person with democratic belief, has to do, then she will obviously have a chance and a future in Ukraine’s politics,” Herman said. “Otherwise, she will come in history as a person that failed to handle democratic challenges.”

“This will cross out all these five years, this will cross out her participation in Maidan and all good that has tried to do,” Herman said. (tl/ez)