KRYVYI RIH, Ukraine - Supporters of Yury Milobog, a mayoral candidate in the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast city of Kryvyi Rih, are celebrating several victories in their struggle to cancel the official results of the Nov. 15 mayoral run-off election.
“A genuine popular revolution is taking place in Kryvyi Rih now,” Semen Semenchenko, a lawmaker from the pro-European Samopomich party, wrote on Facebook late on Nov. 30.
Milobog, who represents Samopomich, argues that incumbent Mayor Yury Vilkul, a member of the Opposition Bloc and former ally of disgraced ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, only won by rigging the vote.
According to the official results, Vilkul won with 49.25 percent, while Milobog got 48.83 percent – a difference of just 752 votes.
About 3,000 demonstrators protested against vote fraud in Kryvyi Rih on Nov. 29, and part of them seized the first floor of City Hall. Protesters remained in the building as of Dec. 1.
Following the rally, the Dnipropetrovsk Administrative Court of Appeals on Nov. 30 ordered a recount of the vote at hospitals in six districts of Kryvyi Rih. Milobog supporters have claimed that much of the vote rigging was carried out at polling stations in hospitals.
Later on the same day, Kryvyi Rih’s election commission disbanded district commissions in those districts. Vilkul supporters have lost their majority at the city commission due to several parties replacing their representatives there in recent weeks.
Konstantin Pavlov, a lawmaker from the Opposition Bloc, told the Kyiv Post that he doubted the legitimacy of the commission’s decision since it did not have an official stamp and registration number.
Victoria Shelevytska, a member of Kryvyi Rih’s election commission from Samopomich, told the Kyiv Post that the commission’s head, Pavlo Hivel, who represents the Opposition Bloc, had ignored the city commission meeting and had been hiding its official seal from it.
Hivel eventually brought the seal and put a stamp on the document late on Dec. 1.
He told the Kyiv Post he had not attended the commission meeting because he believed it was not necessary. Hivel claimed that commission members had had no legal right to hold it.
The district commissions, which are controlled by Vilkul supporters, ignored the city commission’s decision and held meetings overnight in what Milobog says was an effort to pass decisions favorable to Vilkul. They were required by the court to consider Milobog’s complaints, and some of them rejected them, he told the Kyiv Post.
“(Hivel) is calling former members of district election commissions and is urging them to commit crimes,” Semenchenko wrote. “It’s too late. (Yanukovych’s) Party of Regions members’ criminal power in Kryvyi Rih has fallen.”
Samopomich lawmaker Yegor Sobolev, Semenchenko and activists of Kryvyi Rih’s AutoMaidan car-based protest group drove to district commission buildings, called the police and prevented some of them from holding what they said were illegal meetings.
Some scuffles ensued, and Milobog supporters poured green paint on Hivel.
Hivel argued in a conversation with the Kyiv Post that, under Ukrainian law, the district commissions still had a right to hold meetings until new members are appointed.
Meanwhile, the Verkhovna Rada’s commission for investigating vote fraud in Kryvyi Rih held its first meeting on Nov. 30.
Oleksandr Chernenko, a member of the commission and a lawmaker from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, told Kryvyi Rih’s First City Channel that the commission had found numerous violations during the election.
One of the major violations is that the number of voters at hospitals drastically soared just before the run-off election, by about 200 per hospital, Milobog supporters argue.
“They filled all the hospitals with patients,” Milobog told the Kyiv Post. “Everyone got sick suddenly.”
Pavlov argued that the number of voters at hospitals was normal compared with previous statistics. He claimed that no evidence of a drastic increase in the number of voters before the run-off had been presented so far.
At a psychiatric asylum, almost 100 percent of patients were recognized as mentally fit for voting and almost all of them voted for Vilkul, which is obvious evidence of violations, Milobog said.
He also estimates that there were about 4,000 ballot stuffing incidents citywide. Pavlov claimed that there was no proof of ballot stuffing.
Moreover, Kryvyi Rih’s city commission made an illegal decision to issue 12 additional ballots per polling station to commission members, despite the legal ban on increasing the number of ballots between a first round and a run-off, Milobog argues.
“We have a feudal state,” he said. “Neither Ukrainian laws nor Ukrainian courts are valid here.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected].
