Central Election Commission investigates reported violations (04/12/98)

Central Election Commission investigates reported violations

by Pavel Politiuk
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

KYIV - A special team of investigators from Ukraine's Central Election Commission is looking into possible election violations during voting in the central Ukainian region of Dnipropetrovsk, an election official said on April 6.

At least 10 political parties indicated last week that they have doubts as to the political objectivity of the regional electoral commission in the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, 340 kilometers (225 miles) southeast of Kyiv, alleging that it had favored the Hromada Party, which is in official opposition to President Leonid Kuchma and his government. Most of the parties that filed protests back President Kuchma.

The March 29 elections marked the first time that Ukraine has employed a mixed election system whereby parties and blocs were voted to fill half of the 450-seat Verkhovna Rada. The other 225 seats were decided in single-mandate balloting

"We must say that our party has information about serious violations in the Dnipropetrovsk region," Oleksander Karpov, a leader of the National Democratic Party, told journalists several days after the elections. "We cannot understand why ballots have been moving from the polling places to the regional commission for two days," he said.

Mr. Karpov represents the single political party that is directly linked to President Kuchma. One of the party's most prominent members, Valerii Pustovoitenko, is the prime minister of Ukraine.

Mr. Karpov is sure that the Dnipropetrovsk ballots were altered in the offices of the regional government of Dnipropetrovsk headed by Pavlo Lazarenko, who is also the leader of the Hromada Party.

The Hromada Party has been and continues to be a sharp thorn in President Kuchma's side. Mr. Lazarenko has been President Kuchma's political archenemy since he was fired from the post of prime minister last summer. His Hromada Party took 4.7 percent of the vote in the Verkhovna Rada elections, and Mr. Lazarenko said he sees the possibility of forming the third largest political faction in the new Parliament.

About 37 percent of the Dnipropetrovsk region's voters, more than 700,000 individuals, cast ballots for Hromada, which is more than half of the 1.2 million people nationwide who supported Mr. Lazarenko's party, according to CEC figures.

"The results of the elections showed that Lazarenko's Hromada is not a political party but only a political clan of Dnipropetrovsk authorities," said Yevhen Kushnariov, presidential chief of staff and a member of the NDP.

He also indicated that the CEC has the authority to call new elections in electoral districts where numerous violations have been substantiated.

A representative of the Hromada Party, Viktor Omelych, warned that Ukrainian authorities may use protests and accusations by political parties about the fairness of the elections as a basis to call the results of the Verkhovna Rada elections "unlawful."

"We know about 100 cases of falsifications, at a minimum," Mr. Omelych said. "But we will not appeal to the courts because we do not want to help the authorities succeed in their effort."

At an April 7 news conference, the chairman of the CEC, Mykhailo Riabets, said that no official complaints had been filed by any political parties about election law violations or falsifications of ballots in the vote for political parties.

However, Mr. Riabets said the CEC has received indications of violations from more than half of the electoral districts of Ukraine. "We got a lot of complaints from Dnipropetrovsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia, Sumy, Kyiv and other regions," said the CEC chairman.

"Members of the Central Election Commission will investigate the complaints on site, but the fire of political passion sometimes exceeds the limits of reason," said Mr. Riabets. He added that the Black Sea port city of Odesa, where foreign observers had criticized the way in which the power struggle between Odesa Mayor Edvard Hurvits and Oblast Chairman Ruslan Bodelan had affected the elections.

Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe said the campaigns for Verkhovna Rada, as well as local elections, in the Odesa region were marred by incidents of violence, arrests and actions against candidates and abuse of public office.

Most of the political parties that passed the 4 percent barrier required to gain a share of the 225 Parliament seats available to political parties and blocs in Ukraine's mixed election system have declared that violations occurred during ballot counting or during pre-election day campaigning.

The Communist Party of Ukraine has declared that about 15 percent of their vote was stolen; the Hromada Party has said that, at a minimum, 3 percent has disappeared; and the Agrarian Party, which will lose seats as a result of the elections, said that 200,000 of its votes were missing.

Agrarian Party Chairman Kateryna Vaschyk said initial election results had showed the party had broken the 4 percent barrier, but that the final results gave them some 200,000 less votes, which left them at 3.69 percent. "I want to know what happened to the votes," said Ms. Vaschyk.

According to Ukraine's election law, during the seven days after the official announcement of election results, any candidate who has evidence of election fraud may appeal to a court to demand a special investigation.

CEC Chairman Riabets, who had predicted before the elections that there would be many complaints by parties and individual candidates, said the CEC does not have a sufficient number of members to check each complaint and recommended that protests be lodged with the general courts.