Ukraine is about to take another major step backward. On Oct. 31, the citizens of Ukraine will go to the polls to elect their local officials.
Unless all men are inherently good with no political or personal ulterior motives, the elections may be marred by pervasive fraud resulting in an overwhelming consolidation of power unknown to democracies. More disconcerting is that this fraud may be perpetrated with international complicity.
The height of political irresponsibility regarding democracy in Ukraine by the international community came on Feb. 8, 2010 following the previous day’s presidential election. A press conference was held by representatives of various institutions from the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights Election Observation Mission which included in addition the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and European Parliament. Their consensus was that the elections had been conducted in accord with democratic norms.
What was unsaid at the press conference was that this conclusion was reached and enunciated despite the fact that the various international observers from the OSCE visited a scant 7.7 percent of the polling places and that the majority of their observers spoke neither Ukrainian nor Russian relying instead on translators.
So President Viktor Yanukovych took office and proceeded to consolidate his power in several ways, one of which was, calling for local elections on Oct. 31 and securing victory simply by stuffing initially the various commissions monitoring the elections with his people which would lead to stuffing the ballot box with votes for his people.
Yanukovych has been derided by many as being intellectually too weak to serve as president. Suddenly, the object of both home and international lampoon is becoming quite dangerous, still ill-suited to be president but de facto becoming very much – a dictator. The international community has played a major role in his rise. Hopefully, it’s not too late.
The electoral monitoring structure in Ukraine has three levels: the Central Elections Commission (CEC), territorial commissions and local commissions. The first consists of fifteen members, nine of whom are affiliated with the ruling Party of Regions. This commission has the duty to appoint the second in accordance with the new law of Ukraine on the election of peoples’ deputies to the Supreme Council of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, the local councils and village, township and city mayors.
The local contingents of the three parties within the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine’s parliament) who formed the majority coalition may each constitute up to three members of a 15-member territorial commission with the remaining six members chosen from the remaining political parties. Finally the second (the territorial commissions) choose the local commissions.
There is no provision in the law for an equitable distribution of executive positions between the ruling parties and the opposition parties. Thus the chair and secretary of both the territorial and local commission may both come from the majority coalition parties.
Finally, the law does not prescribe a quorum for commissions meetings. As a result commissions can rule and even count ballots by a simple majority of those present, irrespective of any quorum.
What followed from this election law and subsequent rulings by the CEC, according to statistics made public by the opposition, is that the current composition of all territorial commissions consists of the following: 2,009 representatives from Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, 1,954 representatives from the People’s Party headed by his coalition ally, parliament speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn, 1,943 representatives from another coalition ally, the Communist Party, and only 1,380 from opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivschyna, and 1,708 from the rest.
Thus the majority coalition totals 66 percent and the opposition has 34 percent. As to executives in the territorial commissions the pro-presidential allies control 1,028 positions (68 percent) and the opposition controls only 476 positions (32 percent), an even greater disparity.
An interesting component of this newest attempt to consolidate power by Yanukovych and his people is that during the last parliamentary elections on Sept. 30, 2007, the three election fractions making up today’s majority coalition totaled 43.72 percent of the total vote while those constituting today’s opposition totaled 44.86 percent with the remaining percentages distributed among election fractions which failed to break the required 3 percent barrier.
The percentages reflected in today’s election commission are not even close to those results. Yanukovych managed to secure new numbers by “inspiring” members of Ukraine’s parliament to switch sides and persuading the courts to rubber stamp approval, despite the fact that all members of Ukraine’s parliament were elected pursuant to electoral fraction lists. No one was elected individually.
Yanukovych has been derided by many as being intellectually too weak to serve as president. Suddenly, the object of both home and international lampoon is becoming quite dangerous, still ill-suited to be president but de facto becoming very much a dictator. The international community has played a major role in his rise. Hopefully, it’s not too late.
Askold S. Lozynskyj is immediate past president of the Ukrainian World Congress and its current main representative at the United Nations.
