Six more deputies elected to Parliament (04/14/96)

Six more deputies elected to Parliament

by Marta Kolomayets
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Six more deputies were elected to Ukraine's Supreme Council on April 7, as attempts to fill all 450 seats of the Parliament continue into their third year.

If all six winners are approved by the Central Electoral Commission, the number of deputies in this legislature will increase to 421. Run-offs in two districts will be held on April 21, which may bring the total of elected deputies to 423 by the end of the month.

On the average, less than 37 percent of the electorate came out to cast their ballots for their district's representative to Parliament, underscoring voter apathy in this election process, which has dragged on since March 1994 when the first elections to the current Supreme Council were held.

Although elections were held in 31 districts throughout Ukraine, voter turnout exceeded 50 percent in only eight districts. In Kyiv, where voters seem the most indifferent, some constituencies had only a 13 to 15 percent voter turnout. Some of Ukraine's citizens have actually made their way to the ballot box a dozen times in the last two years without electing their representative.

Under Ukraine's election law, which democrats in Parliament desperately want to change, there must be more than 50 percent turnout at the polls for elections to be considered valid.

Also, billions of karbovantsi (hundreds of thousands of dollars) have been spent on the election process - with each election in each district running more than $75,000 (U.S.).

For independents with no party affiliation and two Communists were elected on April 7.

In Kyiv, two independents made it to Parliament: Leonid Chernovetsky, 44, an ethnic Russian and the president of Pravex Co., whose holdings include a bank, was elected in the Darnytsia district; and Volodymyr Bondarenko, 43, an ethnic Ukrainian and a teacher of history and social studies, a candidate of the democratic coalition Vybir (Choice), was elected in the Leningrad district.

Twelve of Kyiv's 23 districts still do not have a representative in Parliament.

In Lviv, Olha Kolinko, 44, Ukraine's deputy procurator general, was elected in the Levandivsky district, receiving almost 70 percent of the vote in a field of six candidates.

In Sevastopil, Communist Party member Vadym Zachosov, 54, an ethnic Russian who works as director of the Perus open stock company in that seaside city, won in a field of four candidates, with 61 percent of the vote in the Nakhimovsky district.

The other Communist to win a seat in these by-elections was Vasyl Kuznyev, 65, a teacher of Ukrainian at the Mykolayiv Pedagogical Institute. Mr. Kuznyev, an ethnic Ukrainian, received more than 60 percent of the vote in the Central district of Mykolayiv Oblast.

In the city of Khmelnytsky, Ivan Rudyk, a 46-year-old agricultural engineer who runs the Proskuriv Agricultural Firm, was elected in the town's Zavodsky district. The ethnic Ukrainian received 67 percent of the vote.

Run-offs in two districts are scheduled in the next two weeks. These include the Lenin district in the city of Sevastopil, where Mykola Lutsenko, 48, an independent candidate and one of the editors of Ukraine's naval fleet newspaper, Fleet of Ukraine, will face off against Communist Party member Anatoliy Yurkovsky, 66, a teacher at the Sevastopil branch of the Kyiv Industrial-Pedagogical College. Both men are ethnic Ukrainians.

In the city of Cherkasy, Sosnivsky district, independent candidate Volodymyr Pivtora, 35, a Ukrainian lawyer who works as a judge in the city court, will run against Oleksiy Starodub, 59, a political scientist who is the first secretary of the Communist Party in Cherkasy.

By-elections in the other 24 districts have been postponed for another year, given the high cost of conducting campaigns and voter apathy, according to officials of the Central Electoral Commission.

Given recent deaths and disappearances, it seems unlikely that the 13th convocation of the Supreme Council will have 450 members by March 1998, when its mandate expires.

Last week, Mykhailo Kashlikov, a member of the Communist faction in Parliament who represented a district in Kharkiv, died after a prolonged illness.

And Vadim Plotkin, a deputy from Odessa, disappeared mysteriously from Ukraine last year - allegedly with money from a charitable fund he created. Mr. Plotkin, 56, a member of the Center faction who is said to be living with his son in Brooklyn, was recently stripped of his deputy's mandate.

Yukhym Zviahilsky, Ukraine's former prime minister and a deputy in this Parliament who is currently residing in Israel, has not been stripped of his mandate. Thus, he is still a member of the Supreme Council despite the fact that he has not been in Ukraine since late 1994.

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