Ruslan Koshulynsky, head of Svoboda's election headquarters, was in a hurry. He wanted to give the good news to his people: his party, which was hovering around 5 percent of support during the election campaign, has now managed to get 11-12 percent in all five exit polls.
The staff
in the tiny party office, located in a regular flat in the center of Kyiv,
celebrated the news with happy cheers. But the leadership tried to contain the
euphoria, saying the results now need to be defended from fraud.
“The fifth
place is not our limit,” Koshulynsky said, grinning broadly. He reminded his
team of the party’s first parliamentary election in 2006, when the party was
compared to a one-cell organism because of its
tiny result of 0.36 percent of the total vote.
The most
radical right-wing party on the political spectrum, Svoboda is no stranger to clashes with police
and political opponents. During the Oct. 14 march, its members burned flags of the Communists and the Party
of Regions, while during a July protest against a law favoring Russian
language, an activist wearing Svoboda T-shirt was pictured spraying policemen
with tear gas.
Critics
often compare Svoboda with fascists over the militant nature and nationalist
rhetoric of the party. One of them, the country’s Prime Minister Mykola Azarov
said he was worried because of the high party result. “In any democratic
society the high percentage [for an ultra-right party] would cause alert,” he
said during a live show on Inter TV
channel.
Political
expert Volodymyr Fesenko explained
Svoboda’s results with a high
demand for radical political forces. “Ukrainian borshch [traditional beetroot
soup] will now be spiced up a little,” Fesenko said.
Now, the
party is worried about the official result. Svoboda claims it’s already lost
quite a lot of votes because its name was crossed out from the ballot in
various polling precincts in 55
constituencies. “The local administrations were ordering to mark the party as
one that exited the race,” said Yuriy Syrotiuk, the party spokesman, adding
that Svoboda was going to demand invalidation of results in these
precincts.
So, Svoboda
leadership said it was early to celebrate, fearing that the final figures
produced by the Central Election Commission are not going to look as good.
“As I have
campaign experience since 2006, I know
perfectly well that during the vote count and tabulation by the Central Election Commission it is possible to
decrease the party results up to three percent,” Koshulynsky said, adding that
now all the efforts would be targeted at protecting the good party results.
“If we
start jubilation now, by the morning we will have less than one percent,” Syrotiuk
joked.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be
reached at [email protected]
