http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20041223-015351-8440rThe court-ordered election rematch in Ukraine this past Sunday, featuring opposition presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, probably would not have happened were it not for mobile phone technologies.
The technologies -- text messaging services in particular -- enabled hundreds of thousands of youthful demonstrators to coordinate their activities and take to the streets of Kiev to contest the November election results, experts told UPI's Wireless World.
The technologies were sold by an array of European and American developers, including Zi Corp., which makes short messaging service software for 43 different languages and more than 600 mobile phone handsets. "Ukrainian is one of their newest offerings," said a Zi spokesman in New York City.
Other factors included a national religious revival among the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, as well as a burgeoning, society-wide free-speech movement. The government reportedly stopped many trains from running to the capital in Kiev, attempting to prevent the protesters from massing. There have been estimates reported in the international media that upwards of 500,000 pro-democracy protesters met in Kiev after the disputed presidential election, with youths taking to the streets wearing orange garb -- which spawned the name Orange Revolution.
Now, in Ukraine, the technology has been used to choose a new president.
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