NEWS AND VIEWS: CIUS election monitoring project in Ukraine makes an impact (12/26/04)

NEWS AND VIEWS

CIUS election monitoring project in Ukraine makes an impact

by Bohdan Klid

EDMONTON - When the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) undertook the Ukraine Transparency and Election Monitoring Project (UTEMP) it was not clear what kind of an impact it would have in Ukraine, or if it would succeed in raising the awareness of Canadians about the upcoming presidential election there.

UTEMP was officially launched on September 10 of this year when Borys Wrzesnewskyj, a member of Parliament and Toronto businessman, visited CIUS to present a $250,000 check on behalf of his family's charitable foundation called Dopomoha Ukraini - Aid to Ukraine. James Jacuta headed the project for CIUS, while the non-governmental organization Community Energy Foundation was CIUS's partner in Ukraine.

UTEMP sent 26 people - a good number of them high-profile Canadians - to Ukraine under the auspices of the project. Some, such as Gordon Ashworth, the former national campaign director for the Liberal Party of Canada, were involved in designing and delivering seminars on election laws, policies and procedures for local election officials and scrutineers.

Training sessions were held in Kyiv, but also in regional centers like Sumy, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Poltava and Kirovohrad. To complement the training seminars, project staff also designed an informative website, and printed and distributed an Election Newsletter for observers and others.

UTEMP was involved with training over 1,000 local Ukrainian observers. This was useful and needed, as documented in a letter dated September 20 by Yaroslav Davydovych of Ukraine's Central Election Commission.

However, direct monitoring of the election process by Canadian UTEMP observers turned out to be of crucial importance, especially on the second round of voting on November 21. Several of them made long-term commitments in Ukraine from September on, spending most of their time in regional centers outside of Kyiv. As the election campaign unfolded, they documented many electoral law violations. Eventually, the Supreme Court of Ukraine ruled on December 3 that the run-off election on November 21, was invalid.

Of particular importance were the observer missions of Canadian members of Parliament supported by UTEMP, which included Bernard Bigras (Montreal Rosemont - Bloc Quebecois), Peter Goldring (Edmonton East - Conservative), David Kilgour (Edmonton Mill Woods-Beaumont - Liberal), Judy Wasylycia-Leis (Winnipeg North - New Democrat) and Mr. Wrzesnewskyj (Etobicoke Center - Liberal).

Another UTEMP-sponsored parliamentarian who went to Ukraine as an observer was Sen. David Smith. On the eve of the November 21 vote, he, Mr. Wrzesnewskyj and Mr. Kilgour co-wrote the article "Don't stuff Ukraine's ballot boxes," published in the National Post newspaper - distributed nationwide - in which they highlighted cases of election fraud and abuse.

The Canadian government's swift and decisive announcement not to recognize the officially announced results of the November 21 vote was in part due to the reports of the parliamentarians who witnessed serious electoral law infractions leading up to and during the run-off vote itself.

UTEMP also focused part of its activities and resources on informing the Canadian media about the presidential election in Ukraine, especially the irregularities. The project's media director, John Mraz, penned the sensational article "In the shadow land of lies," that appeared in the November 18, 2004 issue of The Globe and Mail. The article was based on a clandestine meeting with officers of Kharkiv's Ministry of Internal Affairs, in which they described electoral law violations leading up to and during the first round of voting perpetrated by government authorities in support of their anointed candidate, Viktor Yanukovych.

In cities across Canada, local newspapers also carried articles on the election. In Edmonton, many articles appeared in the Edmonton Journal, which either featured or mentioned the activities of Canadians in Ukraine and the UTEMP project.

The Orange Revolution in Ukraine, which was triggered by the massive electoral fraud perpetrated by pro-Yanukovych officials, intensified the spotlight of the world's media on Ukraine. Canadian MPs Wrzesnewskyj and Goldring were featured several times in national TV broadcasts by both the CBC and CTV networks from Kyiv. A one-page interview with the UTEMP project director, Mr. Jacuta, headlined "A 'Grotesquely Corrupted' Result," was published in the December 6, issue of the widely read Maclean's magazine. The CBC Radio program "The Current" featured an extensive interview with Toronto businessman Jack Rabinovitch, founder of the prestigious Giller Prize in Canadian literature, who also went to Ukraine as an observer under the auspices of UTEMP.

Although events are still unfolding, it is not too soon to conclude that the UTEMP project made a solid contribution to the international monitoring effort. More importantly, its role in raising the awareness of Canadians to what was taking place in Ukraine was substantial, and spanned the entire country by way of the broadcast and print media.

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