KRYVYI RIH, Ukraine – A parliamentary commission and the Kryvyi Rih city election commission in Dnipropetrovsk Obast have made several decisions in favor of mayoral candidate Yury Milobog, making a re-run election more likely.
Milobog, who represents the pro-European Samopomich Party, says that incumbent Mayor Yury Vilkul, a member of the Opposition Bloc and former ally of disgraced ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, won the Nov. 15 mayoral run-off election by rigging the vote.
Vilkul denies the accusations.
Vilkul won with 49.25 percent, while Milobog got 48.83 percent – a difference of 752 votes, according to the official results.
The Verkhovna Rada commission on voting fraud in Kryvyi Rih on Dec. 7 ruled that there were violations during the mayoral election. These included ballot stuffing and inclusion of election commission members in voting lists after the expiry of deadlines, Igor Lustenko, a member of the commission from the Batkyvshchyna Party, told the Kyiv Post on Dec. 8.
The parliamentary commission also suspects that there were more patients at hospitals than usual during the election, he said.
The number of voters at hospitals drastically soared just before the run-off election, by about 200 per hospital, Milobog supporters argue.
The Verkhovna Rada commission may consider on Dec. 9 recommending a re-run of the mayoral election, Lutsenko said. The commission meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m.
Parliament is expected to consider within a week the commission’s recommendation and order a re-run election in Kryvyi Rih, according to Lutsenko. At the earliest, this may happen on Dec. 10, he added.
Oksana Syroyid, a deputy speaker of parliament from Samopomich, on Dec. 7 urged the Verkhovna Rada to consider the issue this week.
Also on Dec. 7, Kryvyi Rih’s election commission asked the Verkhovna Rada to cancel the results of the Nov. 15 mayoral run-off and to hold a re-run of the election.
A re-run is seen as an alternative to a recount, which is currently difficult to carry out.
Last month a court ordered six district commissions in Kryvyi Rih to consider recounting votes at hospitals.
The district commissions, which were controlled by Vilkul supporters, rejected the recount proposal. Since then, the city commission has dissolved the old district commissions, and the new ones, which were formed on Dec. 6, are expected to consider a recount again, Hanna Nezdoliy, the city commission’s lawyer, told the Kyiv Post.
However, since lower-level commissions at polling stations have already been dissolved, they will not be able to actually carry out a recount, she added.
This makes a re-run election a more plausible solution.
One obstacle to cancelling the mayoral election’s results is the Central Election Commission’s repeated statements that the mayoral election process should have been completed before Dec. 2.
Pavlo Hivel, the pro-Vilkul head of the commission, argued at the meeting that the commission had no right to make decisions on the election after that deadline.
But Nezdoliy said that the Central Election Commission’s statements were vague and dismissed Hivel’s interpretation.
The city commission is a permanently functioning body and has a right to make certain decisions regardless of election deadlines, she argued.
The city commission also considered accusations that pro-Vilkul members of the commission had falsified documents and asked law enforcement agencies to investigate them. The commission went on to consider claims that the pro-Vilkul members presented false evidence in court.
Vilkul’s supporters deny the allegations.
The meeting dragged on for hours and featured heated debates, with one commission member fainting and Hivel refusing to put a stamp on its decisions before conceding and stamping some of them.
On the same day, Vilkul clashed with Samopomich lawmakers Semen Semenchenko and Yegor Sobolev, who told him he had to leave the City Hall building because he was not the legitimate mayor. Vilkul argued that he was legitimate and accused the Samopomich lawmakers of preventing him from carrying out his duties and of seizing the City Hall building.
Anti-Vilkul protesters peacefully took over City Hall during a rally on Nov. 29.
Semenchenko told Vilkul that he was among those who sparked the war in Donbas by promoting separatism. Vilkul replied that it was Semenchenko, ex-head of the volunteer Donbas Battalion, and people like him who triggered the war by “seizing Donbas.”
The claim that Ukrainian troops were to blame for the war enraged the pro-Milobog war veterans present in the room, with emotions running high.
As a result, Vilkul had to flee and was escorted out of City Hall by his subordinates.
Kryvyi Rih Mayor Yury Vilkul clashing with Verkhovna Rada members Yegor Sobolev and Semen Semenchenko.
A similarly tense situation occurred on the night of Dec. 5, when Vitaly Chernyavsky, a Sobolev aide and veteran of the war, said that police officers, including Kryvyi Rih police chief Valery Lyuty, had abused their power by using physical force against him.
Lyuty, a former aide of Kharkiv Mayor Hennady Kernes – an ex-Yanukovych ally – denied the accusations.
Chernyavsky told the Kyiv Post he was in the building to ensure the election commission’s work was not disrupted after a bomb threat was announced, and several police officers twisted his arms and blocked his movements. The police officers said he was not allowed to move around due to bomb disposal experts’ activities.
Kryvyi Rih’s City Hall has seen numerous bomb threats, most of them false, in recent weeks – something that Milobog supporters attribute to Vilkul proponents’ efforts to disrupt the election commission’s work.
Chernyavsky said that he had started filing a complaint against police officers’ actions and was assaulted by Lyuty as a result. “Lyuty attacked me from behind, snatched my neck, squeezed it, started to twist my arms and hit me against the wall,” Chernyavsky told the Kyiv Post.
On Dec. 6, Semenchenko posted a hospital document showing that Chernyavsky’s head had been bruised, and his neck ligaments had been strained. The police started a criminal investigation into the issue.
The Chernyavsky incident contributed to tensions during the Dec. 6 weekly rally, when thousands of anti-Vilkul protesters gathered for the third time near City Hall.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected].
