ODESA, Ukraine -- Odesa Oblast Governor Mikheil Saakashvili and his aide Sasha Borovik, a candidate in Odesa’s Oct. 25 mayoral election, are disputing the results of the vote.
They allege incumbent Mayor Hennady Trukhanov’s preliminary victory in the first round – meaning more than 50 percent of the vote – could be due to voting fraud. They have presented evidence of alleged violations and said a runoff must take place.
Trukhanov’s spokeswoman Natalia Malsteva defended the incumbent mayor by telling the Kyiv Post that election watchdogs had not observed large-scale vote rigging.
The Bloc of President Petro Poroshenko’s branch in Odesa Oblast, which supported Borovik in the election, said that there should be a recount of the votes due to accusations of voting fraud. Andriy Mahera, a deputy head of the Central Election Commission, said that Odesa’s election commission should decide by Oct. 30 on whether there should be a runoff.
However, the city’s election commission said late on Oct. 27 that Trukhanov had won in the first round with 52.9 percent of the vote. A runoff happens if the leading candidate fails to get at least 50 percent of the vote.
Election watchdog Opora said earlier that Trukhanov received 51.6 percent, while Borovik got 24.8 percent.
According to different exit polls, Trukhanov either won in the first round or got into a second round along with Borovik.
The prosecutor’s office of Odesa Oblast said it had opened three criminal cases into ballot stuffing, election commission members’ attempts to correct numbers in documents and other types of voting fraud.
Borovik said his team had filed a lawsuit against voting fraud and were preparing two more lawsuits. They said the alleged fraud included ballot stuffing and vote buying.
Borovik’s team e-mailed to the Kyiv Post a video in which Alevtina Korotkaya, a member of the election commission at polling station 511104, says the head of the commission had been involved in vote rigging.
She said the number of votes for Trukhanov had been corrected to 506 from 306. The video also contained photos of the documents involved and footage of commission members correcting them.
The documents were also presented by Saakashvili to the press. He said alleged vote rigging schemes in the Oct. 25 election resemble those of the 2004 presidential election, which led to the Orange Revolution.
“They can’t help stealing,” Saakashvili said
at a news briefing. “The same mafia and the same thieves and crooks run
everything – the city’s economy and elections.”
Anatoly Boiko, head of the Ukrainian Voters’ Committee’s Odesa branch, said that Trukhanov had used administrative resources and added that there were cases of vote buying. He also said that, if the results at 10 polling stations in Odesa’s Kotovsky Township were cancelled, a runoff was possible.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected].
