UZHHOROD, Ukraine – Voters in Uzhhorod in Zakarpattya Oblast were given the dilemma of having to choose between a former supporter of ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych against a candidate who has made racist and anti-Semitic remarks.
In the end, in the second round of the election for the city’s mayor on Nov. 15, former Yanukovych ally Bohdan Andriyiv, the current secretary of the city council and a Revival party member, looked to have won the mayoral race
The official results of Uzhhorod mayoral elections will be announced by Nov. 18.
Andriyiv got 20,665 votes compared to his competitor’s 10,903, according to a parallel count by Andriyiv’s main office – the only parallel count in Uzhhorod, which polled 84 voting stations. A total of 3,728 ballots were declared invalid or damaged. The city’s population is 115,000.
Local residents expressed disappointment and disillusionment during the second-round vote, with many lamenting the fact that they were forced to choose between Andriyiv – who was against the EuroMaidan Revolution that ousted Yanukovych — and Serhiy Ratushnyak – a former mayor who is openly racist.
“I’m so tired of choosing between two evils,” said Olena Gornyak, the founder of a local charity organization called Happy Roma.
Uzhhorod was one of 29 cities in Ukraine and the only city in Zakarpattya to hold a second round of voting on Nov. 15. Security was heightened for this poll in light of violence in the city after the first round ofelections, with 1,000 policemen on patrol on voting day. But thefinal turnout in the second round was low, at about 35 percent,compared to 53 percent in the first round, according to the Committeeof Voters of Ukraine.
“I never imagined that we (citizens) would have to choose between former Yanukovych ally Andriyiv, who supported the Anti-Maidan in Uzhhorod, and the racist Ratushnyak, who thinks that black people are not equal to whites,” Gornyak said.
On the day of voting, many other citizens shared Gornyak’s sentiments. People who voted for Ratushnyak described him as being tough, an Uzhhorod native and a “good manager.” Those who voted for Andriyiv said that they were tired of the “rude” Ratushnyak and wanted to give a chance to someone new.
Even Hennady Moskal, the governor of Zakarpattya Oblast, said after voting that he had chosen the lesser of two evils. “I voted for a man who is better as a manger, because I want to see Uzhhorod as a clean, modern city and a tourist center. I’m glad this election madness is finally over,” Moskal told the Kyiv Post.
The city’s election commission reported that in the first round of voting, Andriyiv got 22.24 percent, while Ratushnyak claimed 14.1 percent of the vote.
Volodymyr Feskov, the coordinator of the Opora elections watchdog in Zakarpattya, told the Kyiv Post that the turnout was lower than in the first round because Uzhhorod residents were generally disillusioned, but that the bad weather had also kept people at home. No violations were recorded in the city on election day, he said. However, Opora didn’t conduct a parallel count, he said, because its activists were unable to be present at all 86 voting stations in the city.
According to Feskov, the first round of elections was full of dirty tricks and violations, a factor that he said may have led to more voter disillusionment.
“The local police opened a criminal case only about two acts of bribing voters, and the investigation is still going on, without any result,” he said.
This time around, there was an attempt at influencing voters through the spreading of provocative flyers in the city. The flyers took the form of fake Hr 500 bills with the face of Andriyiv, covered in fake blood. “That’s how Ratushnyak hints that I bought all my votes,” Andriyiv told the Kyiv Post the day before the mayoral runoff in Uzhhorod.
More seriously, two grenades were thrown on Nov. 13 at houses where Andriyiv resides.
“Ratushnyak immediately said that this is my way of motivating voters – showing my party is a victim of reprisals – by attacking my own people,” said Andriyiv. “There are also rumors that some patriots are tryingto destroy the rest of the Party of Regions,” he said, referring to the now-defunct political party of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych.
As a former member of this pro-Kremlin party, Andriyiv argued that Party of Regions membership “doesn’t make a monster or a killer out of a person.”
“Some businessmen needed that membership to improve their business. It was OK in those times,” he said.
Andriyiv said he had sold his energy-saving technology business a year ago,when he was chosen to be the secretary of the local council of Uzhhorod.
As for his financing and participating in Anti-Maidan protests in Uzhhorod in 2013-2014, he said that he had only participated in one incident. “Together with a like-minded local activist, I just tried not to let the radicals break in and burn the city council building, as they did in other cities. We stood around for 30 minutes and didn’t let them damage the property,” said Andriyiv.
His opponent, Ratushnyak, is also a rather controversial figure.
In June, two students of Indian and Nigerian origin were banned from the local Aqua Rio Park water park, which belongs to Ratushnyak, on grounds of their race.
In an interview with the Holos Karpat newspaper in June,Ratushnyak hit back at his critics, saying they should build theirown public water parks, “and invite there all the syphilitic and tubercular gypsies from Zakarpattya and all over the world.”
And Ratushnyak has made anti-Semitic remarks, calling Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who is not Jewish, “stinky little Jew” many times.
Ratushnyak refused to comment to the Kyiv Post. “If you think that filthy bastard and smuggler Andriyiv is my competitor in these elections, we have nothing to talk about,” he wrote on Facebook on Nov. 14.
Ratushnyak openly and proudly calls himself a racist on his Facebook page,saying that all the problems of Europe started when governments decided that “black animals are equal to white people.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Veronika Melkozerova can be reached at [email protected].
