Political groupings charge violations of election law by pro-presidential bloc (03/10/02)

Political groupings charge violations of election law by pro-presidential bloc

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - With just under a month before parliamentary elections, political parties and blocs from various wings of the political spectrum are increasingly alleging violations of campaign election law by a pro-presidential electoral bloc.

Both the Our Ukraine election bloc, led by Viktor Yushchenko and Oleksander Moroz's Socialist Party said that certain government officials were impeding their campaign efforts. They blamed a rival election bloc for the problems.

Commenting on March 4 on a just-completed campaign swing through the central and eastern regions of Ukraine, Mr. Yushchenko criticized efforts by public officials to limit the impact of his political message.

"Some of Ukraine's regions are out of step with democracy," said Mr. Yushchenko. "The authorities there know only a very crude form of democracy and are not prepared for political debate."

Two days earlier in Berdiansk, a city located in southeastern Ukraine, Mr. Yushchenko said that many local officials had simply become campaign workers for the pro-presidential For a United Ukraine electoral bloc, headed by President Leonid Kuchma's chief of staff Volodymyr Lytvyn. He explained that "administrative resources," the use of government officials and the powers of the offices they hold, were being used to interfere with the Our Ukraine campaign.

Mykola Hryniv, assistant director of Our Ukraine, said that at campaign stops its candidates, including Mr. Yushchenko, were refused access to halls they had booked and denied airtime on local television stations for interviews and advertising clips. In one town, Mr. Yushchenko was confronted with a sudden and never explained power outage as he spoke, explained Mr. Hryniv.

The Our Ukraine campaign official also alleged more serious actions against his political organization, including break-ins and robberies of local campaign offices of the Our Ukraine bloc and even beatings of individuals associated with the campaign.

Meanwhile, Socialist Party leader Moroz said during a press conference in the Verkhovna Rada on March 5 that his organization also had been subject to disruptive practices, mostly by oblast and county level officials. He said some Socialist Party candidates had been threatened if they did not withdraw their candidacies. He told of a female candidate to the oblast council in Sumy who cares for about 10 foster children in a foster home she had developed. Mr. Moroz explained that local authorities had left her no choice but to quit the race after they threatened to block the substantial government funding she was receiving to support the children.

Anatolii Tolstoukhov, assistant director of the For a United Ukraine bloc, replied to the accusations on March 7 by saying that, if concrete allegations exist, the political organizations of Mr. Yushchenko and Mr. Moroz should pursue the charges in a court of law.

"If you want my response to allegations that somewhere somebody is turning off the lights on purpose, then the people affected should determine the reasons for it and then turn to the local authorities," said Mr. Tolstoukhov. "If it is being done in connection with the election campaign then they should turn to the courts, that's what I recommend."

Leaders of Our Ukraine said they expected that in the weeks remaining before the March 31 elections the accent might turn from government support for certain campaigns to mudslinging and smear tactics, what Mr. Hryniv called "black P.R."

Mykola Tomenko, a political analyst who is working with the Our Ukraine bloc, said that on Election Day government and election officials could be planning still more illicit tactics, which would amount to outright vote fraud. He said certain election officials could try to illegally manipulate the votes of certain segments of society vulnerable to such attempts. He included in the group the hospitalized, who would not be allowed to go to the polls; and soldiers, prison guards and police officers who he said were people "who essentially had no free choice in the way they will vote."

Mr. Tomenko also said he had received information that in Luhansk election officials had returned to the voter lists some 30,000 to 40,000 names of individuals who had died between 1998 and 2002. Meanwhile, in the western oblasts election officials had identified those people who had gone abroad to work and would mark their ballots for them, alleged the political analyst.

Mr. Tomenko said he believes conclusive evidence of voter fraud in Ukraine would be determined by how exit polling and the final official tallies compared.

"Historically the accuracy of exit polls have been shown to be off by no more than 1 percent," explained Mr. Tomenko. "If they are way off on March 31, it will only prove that the elections were fraudulent."

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