Election authorities announce official results of party list voting (04/12/98)

Election authorities announce official results of party list voting

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Ukraine's Central Election Commission on April 7 announced the official results of the party list voting to the Verkhovna Rada, but has put off publishing official results in the vote for single-mandate representatives.

Central Election Commission Chairman Mykhailo Riabets said at a press conference that the commission had received so many complaints of election law violations and fraud in the single-mandate balloting portion of Ukraine's new election system that it would withhold publishing results for the time being.

Originally, the chairman of the CEC had hoped that results of the party races and the vote for individuals, each accounting for half the Verkhovna Rada's 450 seats, would be announced concurrently .

Both parties and individuals who took part in the March 29 elections have alleged widespread fraud, although most international and domestic observer organizations said election violations were minor and did not affect the outcomes of the races.

The official results did not change from the preliminary results announced last week. The Communist Party will get 84 seats, the Rukh Party will receive 32, the Socialist/Agrarian Party bloc - 29, the Green Party - 19, the National Democratic Party - 17, the Hromada Party - 16, the Progressive Socialist Party - 14 and the Social Democratic Party - 14.

When the party voting results are combined with preliminary single-mandate results, the Communists are guaranteed a strong bloc of 123 seats, but not the absolute majority of 226 needed to control the Parliament.

When presented geographically, the election picture divides the map of Ukraine into three distinctive ideological sections. As one moves from west to the east, the political picture turns redder and redder.

In western Ukraine the Rukh Party decisively took five of eight oblasts: Volyn, Rivne, Lviv, Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk. Chernivtsi, at the Moldovan border, went to the Communists, while the Transcarpathian region voted for the Social Democratic Party (United).

In central Ukraine the Socialists held a strong grip on the Khmelnytsky and Cherkasy oblasts and came close to the Communists in the other eight central oblasts. The Communists and the Socialists combined for 36 percent of the vote in these oblasts. Once east of the Dnipro River, with the exception of the Poltava Oblast, it was all Communists, including the southern Ukrainian autonomous republic of Crimea.

Of the nine eastern oblasts, only Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk did not go Communist. The Sumy region is a stronghold of the Progressive Socialist Party, and Dnipropetrovsk is in the Hromada Party camp, as shown by the 36 percent vote for the party headed by Pavlo Lazarenko.

Forty-four of the newly elected national deputies were elected twice; once as part of the official party lists and a second time as winners in single-mandate voting. Those victors will now give up their place in the party lists to make room for the party member below them on the lists.

Twelve of the twice-elected parliamentarians are Communists. The extent of the Communists' dominance in these elections is further evidenced by the fact that six of the candidates who moved up to take the place of the twice-elected Communists were themselves also elected in single-mandated voting and, therefore, cannot take the party seat. No other party has had to reach as far down its party list to fill the proportion of seats allotted them.

While the CEC sifts through the various allegations of fraud and electoral law violations to decide who is in and who is out, or whether to call new elections in certain electoral districts, leaders of political parties, with unofficial results in their hands, have turned their attention to candidates for the chairmanship of the Verkhovna Rada. That distinction is now held by Oleksander Moroz, leader of the Socialist Party.

At a press conference on April 3 the chairman of the Verkhovna Rada said he believes the results show that "the new composition should have a leftist leader."

However, he refused to comment on who that should be. Mr. Moroz called the elections a "victory for democracy, and therefore for democratic forces."

Viktor Musiaka, the second vice-chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, whose Vpered Ukraino (Forward Ukraine) managed a poor 1.73 percent showing in the party voting, but who was re-elected from his district, said in an interview with the UNIAN news service that "we will be witnesses to shocking alliances of political powers."

He predicted that Mr. Moroz would be re-elected to the post of Verkhovna Rada chairman, while the first and second vice-chairmen's positions would go to a representative of the center and the right.

Mr. Musiaka said that during maneuvering for the highest post in the Verkhovna Rada a series of deals may be struck among political groups with opposing political agendas. "Political powers will come together that under normal circumstances would not be able to find common ground," said Mr. Musiaka.

He said that the 114 national deputies elected as independents would play a major role in electing the new chairman. He also indicated that the possibility exists that financial deals among parties and/or individual deputies could influence who will occupy the chairman's seat.

Meanwhile, Rukh Party leader Vyacheslav Chornovil said the election results show that "now Rukh is the only defender of the national idea in the Parliament." In an April 7 statement he noted, "we are ready for this responsibility."

He also criticized "political parties close to Rukh which despite numerous efforts have failed to take real steps towards reunification." Several right and center-right parties, including the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Christian Republican Party, members of the National Front coalition, have in turn criticized Rukh for being unbending in negotiations to unite.

The National Front bloc did poorly in the elections, and one of its leaders, the mercurial and controversial two-term National Deputy Stepan Khmara, failed to be re-elected in his electoral district.

Rukh was the only party from what is considered the national democratic sector of Ukraine's political spectrum to reach the 4 percent barrier to gain Parliament seats.

As national deputies begin looking to form coalitions and factions, some among them must decide whether they want to take the seat to which they have been elected. Cabinet ministers and government officials cannot by law simultaneously hold a government post and a seat in the Ukrainian Parliament, although plenty did so in the last Verkhovna Rada.

Two Cabinet ministers, Volodymyr Semynozhenko, minister of science and technology, and Valerii Cherep, minister of transportation, resigned their positions in the government to take their parliamentary seats. The influential head of the State Committee on Business Expansion, Yurii Yekhanurov, also has resigned his government position.

Several other ministers, including Minister of Foreign Affairs Hennadii Udovenko and Minister of Environmental Protection and Nuclear Power Yurii Kostenko, both members of the Rukh Party, have indicated they would leave government to take the seats they won in the March 29 elections, but neither has tendered his resignation.