CIS

Home page

CIS

Ukraine Elections Marred by Fraud â€“ International Observers

29 October 2012 19:57 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. International observers on Monday slammed Ukraineâ€™s parliamentary elections as â€œa step backwardâ€ for democracy and said the vote was marred by fraud, intimidation and other abuses, APA reports quoting Ria Novosti.
â€œUkrainians deserve better than these elections,â€ Andreas Gross, head of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europeâ€™s (PACE) observer mission, told reporters in Kiev on Monday afternoon.
Sundayâ€™s vote, in which President Viktor Yanukovychâ€™s ruling Party of Regions seems likely to get 33 percent of the vote, was widely seen as a test not only for Yanukovych himself, but also for Ukraineâ€™s fledgling democracy, particularly given the allegations that have surfaced in recent months of authoritarianism, corruption and the jailing of political opponents.
Several opposition parties also gained considerable ground in these polls, to the point of posing a potential threat to the ruling partyâ€™s hold over the 450-seat legislature. The observersâ€™ findings cast a pall over Ukraineâ€™s democratic future.
â€œUnfairâ€ Vote
The observers criticized the pre-election media coverage as unfair, and also pointed to a lack of transparency in campaign finances and the abuse of administrative resources.
They slammed what they called the inordinate campaign spending by the Party of Regions and its financial backers, many of them wealthy businessmen from the partyâ€™s support base in southern and eastern Ukraine.
â€œA democratic election is much more than a competition between smaller and bigger oligarchs who colonize Ukrainian politics and democracy with their big money,â€ Gross said.
Ukrainian Central Election Committee chief Volodymyr Shapoval dismissed those allegations at a press conference on Monday.
Prime Minister Mykola Azarov told reporters late Sunday night that the vote had been fair.
The observers also took issue with Ukraineâ€™s new electoral law, enacted late last year, which they say hands the Party of Regions an unfair advantage.
Under it, half the parliament is to be elected by established party lists, and half will be chosen by majoritarian constituencies. Critics and opposition members have slammed what they called the manipulation of the latter, by installing â€œdummyâ€ and â€œcloneâ€ candidates to fool voters and funnel votes away from the opposition.
â€œIt was meant to be an improvement, but ended up lacking sufficient legal and institutional guarantees of its proper application,â€ said Pawel Kowal, chief of the European Parliamentâ€™s observer mission.
Opposition Rising
Despite observersâ€™ negative assessments, Ukraineâ€™s opposition forces enjoyed a surge in support, largely as a result of the Yanukovych administrationâ€™s slide in ratings over recent months.
Oleksandr Turchynov, a senior member of the United Oppositionâ€™s Batkivshchyna party, which appeared to have secured about 22 percent of the vote, said Monday that his party was ready to join forces with other opposition groupings that performed well in Sundayâ€™s vote.
Among them was world famous boxer Vitaly Klitschkoâ€™s Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform (UDAR), which scored about 12 percent, and the nationalist All-Ukrainian Union â€œFreedomâ€ party, popular in the Ukrainian-speaking western regions, which by midday Monday looked to have secured about 9 percent of the vote.
The opposition face a difficult road ahead, analysts said Monday.
Serhiy Taran, director of the Kiev-based International Democracy Institute, pointed to the results still expected to come in from the majoritarian district races, which he says could add about 3-4 percent to the Party of Regionsâ€™ tally.
He added that these races featuring â€œindependentâ€ candidates, who are easily poached by the Party of Regions, could be crucial to the oppositionâ€™s future in parliament.
â€œThey can work together on the common initiatives aiming to save democratic values in Ukraine, or to promote European integration,â€ he said. â€œBut I doubt that they will be able to form a majority to influence the government.â€
The preliminary results are expected Wednesday.
European Future
The international observersâ€™ assessment of the elections may now throw Ukraineâ€™s European future further into question.
The West and the European Union have consistently spoken out over the jail term handed down to Tymoshenko, and over Yanukovychâ€™s alleged rollback on democracy.
The US has threatened sanctions, and the EU rowed back on the implementation of an Association Agreement with Ukraine shortly after Tymoshenkoâ€™s imprisonment.
While Taran said it is too early to predict the Western response to Ukraineâ€™s flawed elections, other analysts said that Ukraineâ€™s â€œoff-and-onâ€ relationship with Russia remains more realistic.
In the midst of widespread criticism from the West, the Kremlin has sought to pull Ukraine more aggressively into its orbit, offering a discount on natural gas in exchange for its energy transport infrastructure, as well as membership in the Moscow-led customs union with Belarus and Kazakhstan.
According to Vladimir Kornilov, director of the Kremlin-friendly Institute for CIS Countries in Kiev, Ukraineâ€™s European option is set to remain an elusive goal.
â€œThere is not much of a choice here,â€ he said. â€œ[Ukraine] can knock on that closed door for ten years.â€