Turning the pages back... April 3, 1994 (04/05/98)

Turning the pages back...

April 3, 1994

Four years ago, this newspaper reported on the results of independent Ukraine's first parliamentary elections. Following are excerpts from the news story filed by our Kyiv correspondent.

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KYIV - Defying predictions of voter apathy, over 75 percent of Ukraine's electorate went to the polls on Sunday, March 27, to cast their ballots for a new Parliament in the first democratic elections in independent Ukraine.

Although Ukraine's registered voters succeeded in electing only 49 deputies to a 450-member Supreme Council, the high turnout reflects their anger with the state of affairs in Ukraine under the leadership of President Leonid Kravchuk, a former Communist Party ideologist who has talked of market reforms, but done little to initiate change.

In eastern Ukraine - in the regions of Luhansk and Donetsk and in the autonomous republic of Crimea - voters approved plebiscites on closer ties with Russia, posing the threat of separatism for this country of 52 million. Although these regional opinion polls had been banned by President Kravchuk, nearly 75 percent of the Crimea's voters, the majority of whom are Russian, responded to the plebiscite, which has no legal binding, stating that they wanted more autonomy from Ukraine and dual citizenship. Nearly 90 percent of the voters in Luhansk and Donetsk voted in favor of dual Ukrainian-Russian citizenship, making Russian a state language alongside Ukrainian and closer ties with the Commonwealth of Independent States.

But even with only one-tenth of the parliamentary slots filled on March 27 and runoffs scheduled for April 3 in 48 districts and April 10 in 353 districts, the results after the first round show a growing division between eastern and western Ukraine.

"What we see is a polarization of forces," commented Serhii Holovatyi, who was elected to a second term as a deputy from Kyiv, winning over 50 percent in the first round of voting. "The highest voter turnout was at the two extremes - Luhansk and Halychyna," he said. (In the Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk and Lviv regions, 85-90 percent of the electorate came out to vote; in Donetsk, Luhansk and Dnipropetrovsk, 70-75 percent hit the polls.) ...

"The citizens of Ukraine understand very well that these are no ordinary elections in Ukraine. They are not just elections, but they are a vote for a new state, a new Constitution, a new path for reforms. This is a vote for future social peace," said Viktor Pohorilko, vice-chairman of the Central Election Commission.

Source: "Over 75 percent of electorate turns out to vote for Parliament; 49 deputies elected; 401 seats in runoffs," by Marta Kolomayets, Kyiv Press Bureau, April 3, 1994, Vol. LXII, No. 14, The Ukrainian Weekly.