When Natalya Pukhnata joined a rally on Independence Square this week, she was transported back to the heady days of the Orange Revolution.

Sixteen months on, the plaza was again a sea of banners, flags and tents manned by earnest activists in bright bibs and woolly hats. There was one big difference though: they were not all orange.

Instead, central Kiev was a kaleidoscope of political colours that testified to the vibrancy of tomorrow’s parliamentary elections and to the real legacy of the Orange Revolution.

“It’s chaos. It’s not what we were dreaming of,” said Mrs Pukhnata, a 44-year-old accountant, as a band of drummers in bright green uniforms marched past. “But it is democracy.” Like many Orange revolutionaries, she fears that Sunday’s poll will reverse the reforms introduced since massive protests propelled Viktor Yushchenko, a Western-leaning liberal, to the presidency.

Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian politician whose election victory he overturned, has made a dramatic comeback. His Party of the Regions leads the polls on 30 per cent.

Mr Yushchenko remains at odds with Yuliya Tymoshenko, the co-leader of the revolution whom he sacked as Prime Minister last year because of infighting and corruption allegations.

His Our Ukraine bloc is polling at 20 per cent, while her BYUT bloc is on 17 per cent. If they fail to make up, Mr Yanukuvych could end up in a coalition government, or even prime minister. “These elections offer a choice: either a gang in power or democratic development,” Mrs Tymoshenko warned Ms Pukhnata’s rally. “We won a battle but we have not won the war.”

Yet even if Mr Yanukovych re-enters government, analysts say it is premature to talk about the death of the Orange Revolution. Sunday’s poll will be the most open in Ukrainian history when elections elsewhere in the former Soviet Union are increasingly stage-managed.

Last Sunday, Aleksander Lukashenko, the Belarussian President, won re-election in a poll marked by his monopoly of the media and violent suppression of the opposition.

Here, by contrast, 7,605 candidates from 45 parties are competing freely and vigorously for the 450 seats in parliament. The ballot paper will be almost a metre long. Media access has been equal and coverage balanced. And opposition supporters are not afraid to give reporters their full names.

Mr Yanukovych has warned his supporters — mainly in Russian-speaking eastern and southern Ukraine — that Mr Yushchenko’s Government will rig the vote. But the 3,518 international observers have reported no serious irregularities. The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe said that all parties had been able “to present their positions without hindrance”.

That is a marked contrast to the presidential election of 2004, when Mr Yanukovych’s government monopolised the media and disrupted opposition rallies. “At least if Yanukovych comes out on top, he will have won fair and square,” said one Western diplomat. “That is a huge step forward.”

Mr Yanukovych’s return to government would be a victory for Russia, which openly backed him in the 2004 presidential poll. But even as prime minister, he could not resurrect the authoritarian, pro-Russian regime he once represented.

Vladyslav Kaskiv, a founder of the Pora youth movement that led the 2004 protests, said that Mr Yanukovych had learnt his lessons from the Orange Revolution. “It was a revolution not of politicians, but of the human spirit. People realised for the first time that they could change their leaders. That can never be reversed.”

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