These days, much of Ukraine’s public debate circles around the likely outcome of the March-April presidential elections and its after-effects. In contrast, the challenge of, in the first instance, successfully conducting the two rounds of the nation-wide poll receives lesser attention. That is in spite of the fact that a not likely, but conceivable worst-case scenario has emerged that could unsettle political and even general social stability in Ukraine.
It can happen that incumbent President Petro Poroshenko, on March 31, advances to the second round as a result of a manifest electoral manipulation. Two distinctly “technical” presidential candidates have been registered and are now listed on the long ballot sheet for the first round: Yuri Tymoshenko and Yuliya Lytvynenko. These two political nobodies have no distinct public profiles, electoral campaigns or political parties behind them. The obvious function of their candidacies is to confuse voters, and draw as many as possible votes away from Poroshenko’s nemesis Yulia Tymoshenko.
Recent opinion surveys indicate that there may be a head-to-head race between Poroshenko and Tymoshenko for the second place in the first round, and thus for the chance to participate in the second round, on April 21.
In an unlikely, but catastrophic scenario for Ukraine, the margin between Poroshenko’s possible second place and Yulia Tymoshenko’s possible third place could be as small as, or even smaller than, the sum of votes received by Yuriy Tymoshenko or/and Yuliya Lytvynenko. The support for these two candidates measured in opinion surveys before the elections is negligible. It would thus be obvious that their possible larger percentages in the elections are the result of purposefully triggered misappropriations by voters who have confused their names with that of Yulia Tymoshenko.
That would create a dangerous situation. Millions of Yulia Tymoshenko supporters could feel cheated. In such an improbable, but not entirely impossible scenario, thousands if not tens or even hundreds of thousands of disenchanted Tymoshenko voters could take to the streets, and demand cancellation of the vote. It goes without saying that any such domestic instability will be duly and fully exploited by Russia and its agents in Ukraine.
Even if the authorities are now already preparing for such a scenario and even if an escalation in April can be prevented, this story may not be over after the second round. The final results of the elections and the future presidency of either Poroshenko or Zelenskiy would suffer from a lack of sufficient democratic legitimacy. A president elected via a process principally tainted by a dirty and – for everybody – visible manipulation would be constantly confronted with questions about the rightfulness and legality of his rule.
Ukrainian and foreign governmental and nongovernmental organizations should already today deliberate about how they will behave in such a situation, on April 1, 2019. Western embassies should, in advance, develop strategies on how to restore proper democratic process, in the case of a result obtained via manifest manipulation. For instance, there could be a swift crisis meeting between representatives of the government, political parties, relevant NGOs, OSCE and concerned Western representatives to consider various ways out of such a deadlock.
The stakes and risks of such a scenario are too high to confront it unprepared.
Andreas Umland is a senior non-resident fellow at theCenter for European Security of theInstitute of International Relations at Prague, principal researcher of the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation in Kyiv, and general editor of the ibidem-Verlag book series “Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society” distributed by Columbia University Press.
