Odesa Council seeks foreign observers for elections (03/22/98)

Odesa Council seeks foreign observers for elections

by Pavel Politiuk
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

KYIV - The City Council of Odesa on February 27 appealed to the Council of Europe for independent observers to cover all of the city's electoral districts during the March 29 Verkhovna Rada elections.

Mayor Eduard Hurvits said several recent killings and kidnappings in the city are linked to an effort to remove him and that there are indications that serious electoral fraud could occur in the city in both the regional and national elections. "We sent a letter to the Council of Europe and to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe because we are not sure that results of city and Verkhovna Rada elections will not be falsified," said Mayor Hurvits.

He accused the Odesa Regional Administration and the regional procurator's office of trying to oust him. A conflict between Mr. Hurvits and Regional Administration Chairman Ruslan Bodelan has been raging since the regional government tried to bring city revenues into its own coffers three years ago. Mr. Bodelan, who plans to run for mayor, has filed financial mismanagement charges against Mr. Hurvits several times and called for his removal.

"They (Mr. Hurvits' political opponents) are ready for everything, and will not stop at anything; they will shoot and they will bomb," said the mayor.

Mr. Hurvits called the situation in the Black Sea port city "catastrophic" and said that criminal activity has sharply increased since the election campaign season began. He said that his political opponents have initiated a series of provocations against him aimed at removing him from office. "There is terror in the city, and the aim is to get rid of the mayor," he said.

During the past six months several well-known businessmen and journalists have been killed in gangland-style slayings.

Yan Tabachnik, the president of Bipa-Moda and owner of an Odesa professional basketball team of the same name, was killed in the city center late last month, and Leonid Kapelushnyi of the Russian newspaper Izvestiia was seriously wounded in a gunfire attack.

In August, Borys Dervianko, editor-in-chief of the city's most popular newspaper, Vechernaia Odesa, was shot and killed.

The kidnapping of Ihor Svoboda, chairman of the Kyivskyi District of Odesa, on February 27 by five assailants compelled the City Council to make its plea to the Council of Europe. Mr. Svoboda is a personal friend of Mayor Hurvits and a critic of regional authorities.

Although Mr. Hurvits said police have not tried to search for Mr. Svoboda, police officials said hundreds of its workers have been investigating the crime daily.

Mr. Hurvits indicated that the police would not help because they, too, were interested in wresting power away from him. "We do not expect help from the police because they are widely linked with criminal groups."

On March 4 the chief of the Odesa city police, Feliks Matsenko, said the investigation is now being coordinated by Ukraine's Internal Affairs Ministry and that a special commission had arrived in Odesa to look into the activities of the regional police.

Last month a high-level government commission headed by the secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, Volodymyr Horbulin, conducted an investigation into the crime problem in Odesa and recommended firing several top police officers and officials in the procurator's office. The recommendation has yet to be implemented.

Mayor Hurvits' opponents from the regional administration say most of the provocations and crimes against well-known people, some of whom are considered Mr. Hurvits' political enemies, were organized by the mayor's team to discredit his opponents in the city elections.

The resolution that the Odesa City Council adopted at an emergency session read: "The difficult criminal situation in the city can change only if the decision of the anti-corruption coordination committee that provides for a radical change in the power structure of the Odesa is carried out."

The City Council also urged the mayor to form a special committee to coordinate the fight against crime in Odesa.

"The situation is unbelievable; our police have not finished investigations on any serious crimes," said Mr. Hurvits. "Odesa has investigated about 100,000 crimes without any success."

Comments by Police Chief Matsenko contradict the mayor's statement. Mr. Matsenko said that in the first two months of 1998 crime in Odesa dropped by 7 percent. During the election season about 1,000 additional policemen will be used.

Mayor Hurvits is sure that only Odesa's residents, when they vote, can decide the final outcome in the conflict between himself and the regional leaders; that only they can stop the city's crime wave.

"The appeal to Europe is our last step because we already understand that the power that can stop the criminal pressure [on the elections] does not exist in Ukraine today."

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