The election was dirty all over Ukraine, but it got no dirtier than in Kirovohrad
In an election season rife with fraud, the name of one disputed oblast stood out: Kirovohrad. “The election results were falsified in the most plain way – by simply changing the figures,” said Our Ukraine parliament deputy Volodymyr Yavorivsky, who monitored the elections in this southern region.
Kirovohrad oblast, southeast of Kyiv, shares space with Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv oblasts atop the list of Ukraine’s most corrupt electoral districts. But nowhere else, observers say, were falsifications so flagrant. The situation is also unique in that, unlike in the country’s far east, most Kirovohrad voters supported opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, as the region’s polling protocols showed.
“When the territorial election committee finished the calculations, the result was Yushchenko winning by roughly 25,000 votes,” said Yavorivsky, who was present during the calculations at territorial election commission (TEC) 100. “I left Kirovohrad, and by the time I reached Kyiv they announced diametrically opposite results – a Yanukovych victory,” he said.
Kirovohrad is also unique because opposition supporters fought back in court. Even before the Supreme Court cancelled the election results on Dec. 3 and called for new elections on Dec. 26, the Kirovohrad Oblast Court of Appeals had declared TEC 100’s protocol “invalid,” and called “illegitimate” their actions in validating the Nov. 21 election results.
Long preparations
Kirovohrad had been in the news even since the first round of voting on Oct. 31.
“Thorough preparation to falsify the presidential elections is taking place in the city,” wrote Mykola Sadovy, a Kirovohrad City Council member, in a letter to presidential candidate Oleksandr Moroz on Oct. 29. “The process is governed by the city head’s deputy. Every measure is being taken to ensure the victory of candidate Yanukovych.”
Sadovy alleged in his letter that “at about 40 polling stations the heads of the committees will have the blank protocols signed even before the elections… Signing is followed by distribution of money.”
Sadovy alleged that election lists containing up to 800 “dead souls” were present at each station, and that other lists had up to 70 percent of the voters’ names misspelled. He also alleged that lists for certain apartment blocs were missing up to 150 voters. Militia workers, he alleged, were obliged to put in writing that they and their family members would vote for Yanukovych.
Other alleged methods listed by Sadovy to taint the local vote included ink-staining ballots that were not for Yanukovych. According to the law, a ballot with extra marks or signs on it is declared invalid. Sadovy claimed the falsifiers were getting women with long nails to smear their nails with ink on the inside, so that they could subtly deface the documents.
TEC 100 was one of the last TECs to submit its results from the Oct. 31 first round. It reported a Yushchenko victory, by 35,000 votes. After the calculations were made, the head of the committee, Volodymyr Babiy, took the committee’s seal and left his workplace along with 25 other committee members, observer Anatoliy Revenko told the press. The protocol was therefore left invalidated.
The group returned to the committee building only after several days, and finally signed the protocol testifying to Yushchenko’s victory rather than face possible legal penalties.
The protocol was delivered to the Central Election Committee on Nov. 2, but without a complete set of signatures from all committee members, Ukrainian News reported.
On the same day, Babiy resigned, telling the press that he had been under pressure on Election Day. It remained unclear, however, by whom he had been pressured.
Revenko filed a complaint with the Kirovohrad Oblast Court of Appeals, protesting the TEC members’ actions. On Nov. 9, the court rejected the members’ claims that they were justified in leaving the TEC building because they were being pressured.
Meanwhile, the CEC refused to accept the results of TEC 100, announcing on Nov. 10 that “it is impossible to define the election results precisely.”
Yuriy Klyuchkovsky, Yushchenko’s representative on the commission, appealed the CEC decision to the Supreme Court. On Nov. 16, the Court decided to make the CEC count the TEC 100 results after all.
Second round
On Nov. 21, the second round of the elections brought news of more violations. By order of the TEC, 469 local polling station committee members representing 40 such stations, all representatives of Yushchenko and other opposition candidates, were fired. Later, the Kirovohrad Oblast Court of Appeal reinstated them.
At six more stations, journalists were not allowed inside, reported the www.maidan.org.ua Web site.
At one station, the committee head and the secretary simply didn’t show up meaning the key for the safe, in which the blank ballots were stored until the election began, was with them, observer Volodymyr Bilyk told the Post. The locked safe had to be cut in half, and the only instrument available to cut into it was a handsaw. It took seven hours to accomplish the job, so voting began only at 3 p.m.
At another station, Bilyk said, about one third of the voters didn’t vote because the committee posted a sign on the door reading, “Voting is canceled due to weather conditions.”
At night, during the vote-counting, two stations were attacked by gangs of thugs and committee members and observers beaten. The militia guarding the station disappeared and returned only after the attack, reported www.maidan.org.ua.
To crown it all, eight of the ten TEC 100 members – all those not representing Yushchenko – disappeared from the city the next day before the vote count was finished. Nobody has seen them in the city since.
On Nov. 28 Sadovy, deputy head of the TEC, made a sensational announcement on Channel 5.
Earlier, CEC head Serhiy Kivalov had stated that all 225 Yushchenko representatives on election bodies throughout the country had signed their respective election protocols.
Now Sadovy said that he and his colleague Petro Chubchenko, both of whom represented Yushchenko in TEC 100, had never signed their protocol. The protocol the CEC had was a fraud, Sadovy insisted.
“I haven’t seen that protocol and did not sign anything,” he said on Channel 5, calling in live from Kirovohrad on Nov. 28.
Official results had Yanukovych winning 92,580 votes and Yushchenko 40,857. Sadovy claimed that, in fact, Yushchenko had received 78,257 votes, and Yanukovych 57,574.
“The figures in the protocol sent to the CEC were enormously distorted,” said Sadovy on Channel 5. “At 42 stations, the figures were put opposite to how they should have been, and at 57 stations, Yushchenko’s figures were lowered and Yanukovych’s raised.”
On Nov. 23, members of the Kirovohrad oblast electors’ committee Volodymyr Hryshko and Oleksandr Kulish, and later regional council deputy Mykhailo Demchenko, began a hunger strike, protesting mass violations. They locked themselves up that day in the TEC 100 building to guard the bags carrying the ballots and the real protocols, fearing that the local mafia or militia would take away the evidence of fraud.
“The committee was meeting in some unknown building and falsified 70 local polling station protocols,” Hryshko said at a press conference, announcing the hunger strike on Nov. 23. “They can act only behind curtains now to hide the truth from the people. Without lies and threats, the bandit power cannot go on.”
The hunger strike lasted six days. Thousands of students surrounded the TEC building to protect the strikers. Over several days, the student population grew in size to 15,000. They maintained their vigil in front of the TEC building around the clock.
Wearing orange in Kirovohrad is safe by day, but risky at night, native Natalia Zarubina told the Post.
The trial
On Nov. 29, the eight members of TEC 100 who disappeared before finishing the vote count and signing the allegedly false protocol went on trial for violating election law and counterfeiting election documents.
According to Article 158 of Ukraine’s criminal code, the alleged crimes are punishable by five to eight years’ imprisonment. The defendants didn’t show up in court, so the court hearings took place with the defendants in absentia. On Nov. 30, the court pronounced the committee’s actions illegal, repealed the TEC 100 protocol, and ordered it to recalculate the results.
During the legal proceedings, the court building was beset by pro-Yushchenko supporters draped in orange. A local resident who refused to be identified for fear or recrimination said the crowd gathered to make sure thugs or the militia wouldn’t interrupt the court proceedings.
“The judges felt safer and could work normally,” he said.
Parliament deputy Yavorivsky, who monitored the second election round in Kirovohrad, told the Post that the mafia threat was real. He said that on the night of the elections he was approached in a corridor of the TEC building by Vadym Volkanov, deputy mayor of Kirovohrad, who, by law, was not allowed to be on the premises then. Volkanov began to threaten Yavorivsky.
“He was using very dirty and vulgar language and saying ‘Why did you come here’ This is our town and we’ll manage it without you.’”
Later, Yavorivsky alleged, Volkanov’s retainers surrounded him and tried to throw him down the staircase.
Volkanov’s office refused to comment on the allegations.
“They acted completely lawlessly,” Yavorivsky said of the behavior of Kirovohrad authorities during the elections. “They were sure they had enough power, and no one imagined there could be any resistance whatsoever.”
Yavorivsky is planning to return to Kirovohrad to supervise preparation for the Dec. 26 revote. He’s convinced that this time there will be no falsifications of such magnitude.
“During the first and second rounds, people were experiencing awful pressure. Today the local powers won’t have the chance to choke people’s voices,” Yavorivsky said. “The people of Kirovohrad were bent and forced on their knees by the local powers. But people were still voting for Yushchenko, although covertly. I hope the people will soon rise up and speak with their full voices.”
The PGO’s job
As of Dec. 15, the eight TEC 100 members charged with violating election legislation and falsifying election documents are still missing.
“It’s rumored that all of them are hiding in Moldova,” said Elmira Drobko, a committee member at polling station #79 in Kirovohrad.
Yavorivsky told the Post he had already petitioned Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office to open criminal cases against the eight.
“Now it depends on the Prosecutor General when these criminal cases are opened,” the deputy said. “As soon as they are, the police will start looking for these people.”
Yavorivsky promised he would do everything to have them convicted.
“I hope I can face them and look them in the eyes once again.”
