Elections declared invalid in four districts (04/19/98)

Elections declared invalid in four districts

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Two Ukrainian courts and the country's Central Election Committee (CEC) have declared in separate rulings that because of major legal infractions elections in four electoral districts are invalid and must take place again.

Election results were voided by the CEC in districts in the Donetsk and Cherkasy regions and by local courts in the Kherson and Dnipropetrovsk regions on April 13, because violations of election law were deemed to be significant enough to have influenced results.

The CEC first nullified results in a district in the town of Slaviansk, Donetsk Oblast. "In the 58th electoral district (Slaviansk) there were very serious violations," said Natalia Khorukh, spokesperson for the CEC. She said evidence of the rigging of ballots was found to exist, as well as major ballot counting errors.

The CEC has been inundated with complaints and accusations of election law improprieties and fraud since the March 29 elections to the Verkhovna Rada. Thus, it has delayed announcing the official tallies of the single-mandate voting for individuals from Ukraine's 225 electoral districts. "There are a huge amount of complaints, and the investigations will take time," said Ms. Khorukh.

The CEC also declared void election results in the 197th electoral district of the town of Smila, Cherkasy Oblast.

In addition, a special investigative commission of the CEC is continuing its investigation of the election results of party races in the parliamentary elections in the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, the political base of Pavlo Lazarenko, chairman of the oblast regional council and leader of the Hromada Party. Hromada took a commanding 36 percent of the vote in Dnipropetrovsk, but did no better than 3 percent in all other regions of Ukraine.

President Kuchma blasted Mr. Lazarenko - today his archrival, but at one time a close political ally - on April 13 at a meeting of senior officials of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast administration. With Mr. Lazarenko present at the meeting, President Kuchma bluntly accused his former prime minister of outright theft and of buying votes in the election campaign. Mr. Lazarenko, who "first stole money from people, began paying 10 hryvni to voters as a bonus to their pensions on the eve of elections," said the president. "Pavlo Lazarenko will be made answerable for his deeds," he said.

Mr. Lazarenko has not responded to the president's allegations.

President Kuchma has requested that the Procurator General of Ukraine open an investigation into Mr. Lazarenko's political and business activities. The head of the Hromada Party is generally considered to be one of the richest people in Ukraine.

Court rulings

Ukraine's Constitutional Court has previously ruled that candidates should turn with their appeals to Ukraine's courts. Now the courts have declared voting in two electoral districts to be invalid.

The first such decision by a judicial body in the 1998 parliamentary elections came in the Kherson Oblast city of Kakhovka, home of the country's most popular music festival, the Tavria Games. The municipal court declared elections invalid in electoral district No. 186, where Andrii Snigach of the Communist Party narrowly defeated the candidate from the Green Party, Mykola Bahraiev. Mr. Bahraiev is the general director of the Tavria Games.

According to Interfax-Ukraine, the court decided to nullify the elections on the basis of evidence that election ballots were not properly registered with election commissions and that many lacked official signatures.

There were also claims that the Communist Party had threatened supporters of Mr. Bahraiev and that Communist Party representatives had campaigned on election day.

The court of the city of Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, also decided that because of major election law infractions balloting must take place again in electoral district No. 35.

Election results are being reviewed by an array of political and government organizations, including the presidential administration. President Kuchma has instructed the Procurator General's Office to examine applications from 12 political parties, public organizations and nearly 9,000 citizens of Odesa city and oblast and to investigate results and procedures in elections to the Verkhovna Rada and to municipal posts.

A controversial and violence-filled election race for Odesa mayor between incumbent Mayor Eduard Hurvits and oblast boss Ruslan Bodelan ended with a victory for Mr. Hurvits.

However, Mr. Bodelan has claimed that Mayor Hurvits won fraudulently. The Odesa Oblast chairman, who is an appointee of President Kuchma, has filed a claim in the Kirovohrad Oblast court as well. He told Interfax-Ukraine that he did not petition the court in his home oblast because of "ethical problems" that might be involved. He did not elaborate.

In accordance with the election law, the CEC has until April 19 to review and decide all official candidate complaints, but the CEC press office said that it hopes at least 90 percent of the complaints are resolved by then.

As of April 15 the CEC had confirmed the victories of 176 candidates in single-mandate districts and officially registered them as national deputies to the Verkhovna Rada.