SIMFEROPOL, Crimea -- While Crimea on March 17 publicly celebrates the result of Sunday's referendum with a holiday, most of the world has condemned the vote as illegal from conception to organization to conduct on Election Day itself.
The date of the referendum was moved by the Crimean parliament from May to March 30 and then – just 10 days before – to March 16.
The referendum question also changed, from concerning more autonomy for Crimea to Crimea becoming part of the Russian Federation. According to the Ukrainian constitution, only an all-Ukrainian vote can decide questions of Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
In the days leading up to the referendum, Crimeans were bombarded with one-sided propaganda. Ukrainian TV channels in Crimea were taken off air, to be replaced by Russian channels. Meanwhile thousands of posters and billboards appeared agitating for a pro-Russian vote and presenting the alternative as Nazism or fascism. Scarcely one promoted an opposite view. The posters were still in place on the evening of March 16.
“There’s usually a rule that the day before an election or referendum all agitation is forbidden,” said Nadir Ditanov, a journalist with local Crimean Tatar channel ATR. “But on March 15 those posters were still being put up or left in place. It was an open call to vote for Russia.”
ATR, which remains available via satellite or internet, ran alternative campaigns which encouraged Crimeans to think independently, and showed people from Crimea and from the rest of Ukraine speaking in favour of Crimea remaining a part of Ukraine. But most organisations who wanted to print or place pro-Ukrainian materials were blocked by local advertising agencies or simply did not have time, said Andrey Trisko, who heads the Crimean branch of the NGO Committee of Voters of Ukraine.
On voting day, alleged violations included Russian citizens being allowed to vote, bulletins being printed on ordinary office paper, journalists being denied access to polling stations, open pro-Russian agitation inside stations, and presence of paramilitary forces outside.
Mikhail Malyshev, head of the Crimean referendum Election Committee, said on March 16th that not a single official complaint about violations had been filed.
Oleksandr Chernenko, head of the NGO Committee of Voters of Ukraine, said he knew of several cases when journalists and observers were not allowed inside polling stations.
“But we cannot say exactly how widespread this was, as very few of our observers were here,” he said.
The Kyiv Post was denied access to one station during vote counting. Yevgeny Bontman, a journalist from Echo Moscow, was also turned away. He said he had seen that most people voted to join Russia and “we just wanted to confirm it during the vote count but they pushed me away.”
Andrey Trisko noted physical attacks and intimidation of journalists from Al Jazeera and ATR.
Chernenko added that one more common violation was that polling stations had additional lists and were putting down the names of people who were not registered at those stations. “That’s why the turnout was so huge,” he said.
ATR filmed a voter voting four times with the same passport in different polling stations, according to these additional lists.
Malyshev admitted the possibility of ‘dead souls’, where the names of deceased people are included on voting lists. In the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election which started the Orange Revolution, the use of ‘dead soul’ votes was one of the key mass violations.
Trisko observed one list of voters in a Saki polling station that dated from 1999.
Malyshev said any ‘dead souls’ included in lists were due to the Kyiv authorities, which denied access to voter lists so that local Crimean councils had to draw up new electoral rolls. Malyshev said this had been difficult to do in time for the referendum, but he insisted any extra names were simply mistakes and had not been used to make false votes.
Results are reported directly to the Central Election Commission, Malyshev said. They will not be posted at individual polling stations, making it impossible to verify results. The results of 50 percent of counted votes were announced less than three hours after polling stations closed.
Figures released by Malyshev from the election committee put overall voter turnout in Crimea (including Sevastopol) at 82 percent. The highest turnout, in Kerch, was 94 percent.
Journalists reported seeing scarcely any observers at polling stations. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe refused an official invitation from the Crimean parliament to send observers because it considers the referendum illegal.
A team of OSCE military observers were turned back from entering Crimea three times prior to the referendum, with shots being fired into the air in one incident on March 8.
The Ukrainian Committee of Voters also did not organise official observers on March 16th because it considers the referendum illegal.
A team of self-described international observers, which included a representative of the Russian minority in Latvia, a Spanish deputy supporting Catalan independence, a Russian Federation deputy from the Communist party and several far right euro-parliamentarians, said they observed no violations during the day of voting. They told journalists how grateful they were to have been allowed to watch such an ‘experiment in democracy’, as one described it.
“What I saw was a democratic choice, I didn’t see any problems,” said Aymeric Chauprade, an advisor for French National Front leader Marine le Pen.
Most of these observers spoke as much about their view of the political background as they did about what they had seen in polling stations, openly criticizing the US and EU and defending the right to self-determination.
Crimeans themselves voting in favour of joining Russia were unconcerned about any possible irregularities or violations.
“Because there’s all this preparation and all this information, I think transparency is guaranteed,” said Nadezhda Koshileva, who cast her vote in Bakhchisaray.
Trisko from the Committee of Voters of Ukraine has a different view. “What happened was like a show for Russian TV that cost the budget of Crimea 16 million hryvnas. To call it a realistic or fair process is simply wrong.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Lily Hyde can be reached at [email protected].
Editor’s Note: This article has been produced with support from the project www.mymedia.org.ua, financially supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, and implemented by a joint venture between NIRAS and BBC Media Action.The content in this article may not necessarily reflect the views of the Danish government, NIRAS and BBC Action Media.
