Election observers traverse Ukraine in rerun of presidential run-off election

by Tamara Gallo-Olexy
Ukrainian Congress Committee of America

KYIV - In response to an appeal from the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA) for volunteers to serve as election observers for the repeat run-off of the Ukrainian presidential election, over 2,000 people sacrificed their holiday celebrations and traveled to Ukraine to help ensure a fair and fair election on December 26, 2004.

The UCCA election monitoring delegation included teams from the United States, Australia, Canada, Great Britain, France, Poland, Belarus, as well as individuals from Germany, Italy, Denmark and Sweden. While in Kyiv, hundreds of election observers attended two UCCA briefing sessions on December 23 and 24, 2004, to acquaint themselves with the election law of Ukraine and their responsibilities in serving as independent, objective election monitors.

John Herbst, U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, welcomed the election observers at the briefing session on December 24, 2004 and thanked them for their interest in monitoring the elections. "Many falsifications happened in the last rounds of the Ukrainian elections, therefore, the role of an international election observer is critical," stated Ambassador Herbst. Election law specialists Serhiy Kalchenko and Yarema Bachynsky provided detailed information about the procedures involved in serving as international election observers.

Greetings were also delivered by Askold Lozynskyj, president of the Ukrainian World Congress; Michael Sawkiw Jr., president of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America; and Stephen Romaniw, president of the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organizations.

Following the briefing sessions, hundreds of observers left Ukraine's capital and traveled to various regions of Ukraine, primarily the southern and eastern oblasts, where many election violations were reported in the two previous rounds.

UCCA election monitoring teams were deployed to the following oblasts: Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Crimea, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kherson, Kirovohrad, Kyiv, Lviv, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Poltava, Sumy, Zakarpattia and Zaporizhia.

Early reports from the various international election observer teams indicate that there were no widespread voting irregularities; however, some technical violations were noted.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, January 9, 2005, No. 2, Vol. LXXIII

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