Yushchenko's Our Ukraine bloc wins nearly 25% of by-party vote in parliamentary elections (04/07/02)

Yushchenko's Our Ukraine bloc wins nearly 25% of by-party vote in parliamentary elections

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Viktor Yushchenko's Our Ukraine Bloc grabbed nearly a quarter of the by-party vote and led the way in the March 31 elections to Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada. It was the first time a political organization other than the Communists won the most votes in parliamentary elections. However, a strong showing by the pro-presidential For a United Ukraine in single-mandate district voting will give it the second largest number of seats in the next Verkhovna Rada.

Voter turnout was high by Western standards - nearly 65 percent - but less than usual for Ukraine, which generally can expect about 70 percent voter participation. Most active were voters in the western cities of Lviv, Ternopil, Rivne and Khmelnytskyi, all registering 70-75 percent participation. The least active were Crimean voters, 55 percent of whom turned out to cast ballots.

While only the international observer team from the Commonwealth of Independent States was ready to state that the elections were "super transparent" and "super democratic," most observers - domestic and otherwise - said the various infractions and improprieties that did occur did not substantially alter the results.

President Leonid Kuchma, the "guarantor" of Ukraine's Constitution, according to the country's fundamental law, thanked Ukrainian voters for their "high level of civic duty and consciousness" a day after the vote.

"The choice they made is the ultimate verdict. The will of the people cannot be doubted," said Mr. Kuchma.

The president also said he is ready to cooperate with all the "constructive forces that are ready to share responsibility for the nation's future."

Our Ukraine won a decisive victory over the Communist Party of Ukraine, which took second, and 31 other parties and blocs that had been registered for the third democratic elections to Parliament since Ukraine declared independence in 1991.

Four other political parties/blocs - less than had been anticipated - also gained the minimum 4 percent support from the Ukrainian electorate required to obtain parliamentary seats in the next Parliament.

While the Our Ukraine Bloc took 23.6 percent of the vote, the Communists took 20 percent. The For a United Ukraine Bloc came next with 11.81 percent, followed by the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, with an unexpectedly strong 7.24 percent finish and the Socialist Party, equally surprising at 6.88 percent. The Social Democratic Party (United) qualified closest to the margin, with a disappointingly weak 6.27 voter support.

Ukraine's election law states that Verkhovna Rada seats are won in a mixed election system, in which 50 percent of the 450 parliamentary members are chosen in multi-mandate districts by-party polling, while the other half are picked in single-mandate voting, where voters choose a single individual to represent their district.

The For a United Ukraine bloc remained only slightly behind Our Ukraine due to a strong showing in the single-mandate district voting, where it won 66 of the other 225 seats. Our Ukraine came next with 42 seats, followed by seven other parties with single digit numbers.

With the district votes tallied, at press time Our Ukraine retained the most members in the next Parliament, a current total of approximately 112, followed by the For a United Ukraine with about 102 members expected. Next should come the Communists with some 66 national deputies, the Socialist Party with 24, the SDPU with 23, and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc with 21.

Independent candidates won the rest of the seats - 93 in all - many of them contestants who had decided not to reveal their political loyalties before the results were in. It turned out after the vote that 18 of them were actually For a United Ukraine bloc sympathizers. Another eight also revealed various party ties, including one affiliated with Our Ukraine, leaving 67 unaligned for the time being.

Several of the parties and blocs that failed to gather 4 percent support in the by-party voting nonetheless managed to get representatives elected in the districts, including the Women for a Future Bloc, the Democratic Union, the Yednist Party and the Yabluko Party, and will be represented among deputies in the Verkhovna Rada.

The biggest loser in this year's elections was the Party of Greens of Ukraine, which could muster only 1.3 percent support after gaining entry into the Parliament in the 1998 elections for the first time ever with 5.5 percent of the tally (see related story on page 4).

The Progressive Socialists failed to win seats for the first time ever, falling just short of the 4 percent barrier with 3.22 percent. The Democratic Union/Democratic Party Bloc, the Yabluko Party and the Yednist Party were other political groups that failed to gather the needed points after pre-election surveys had given them a chance of winning seats.

Geopolitically, the map of Ukraine remains very divided, with the center-right forces aligned with Mr. Yushchenko and the Our Ukraine Bloc dominating the western oblasts of Ukraine. The Communist Party retained control over much of the south and some of the east, although it suffered large losses of seats in the Donetsk and Luhansk, where the For a United Ukraine Bloc established a near monopoly. However the pro-presidential bloc does not show well on the map because, other than in the heavily populated Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, as well as the Kharkiv area its victories were scattershot across districts in all the regions of Ukraine.

When reduced to district representation, the picture showed support for Yulia Tymoshenko and her bloc strongest in a diagonal swath of central localities running from around Vinnytsia to about Poltava.

There were fears that elections in the Crimea might be ruled invalid after widespread protests on the peninsula, provoked by a district court's removal of Leonid Hrach, the chairman of the autonomous republic's Parliament, as a candidate to the peninsula's legislature. A court order led to fears that Mr. Hrach might receive the most votes even though officially not a candidate. Mr. Hrach had threatened to grind the electoral process to a halt if he was not included in it, but the vote proceeded. While many people voted for the man who is considered one of the "godfathers" of Crimea, support for him was not overwhelming, and the CEC ruled that there was no reason to invalidate the elections held there.

The problems in Crimea were among many Ukraine faced during a turbulent and controversy-filled campaign season, which from the very first official day of campaigning, New Year's Day, was filled with mudslinging, disinformation, smear tactics and even the murder of a candidate (see story above). Along the way there was much talk about the illegal use of government resources by the For a United Ukraine bloc, which was led by President Kuchma's chief of staff, Volodymyr Lytvyn, as well as uneven access to the mass media, which is largely controlled by supporters of Mr. Lytvyn's bloc and members of the SDPU.

On election day observers and candidates were warned of efforts to use fraudulent ballots and of election commissioners who might put too much weight on their own choice during the vote count. There were extensive reports of voter intimidation and of electors being bussed in from outside regions to vote with questionable election chits supposedly supplied by courts. But, in the end, most agreed that while extensive, the various election law inconsistencies did not change the outcomes of the races.

In order not to have to rely exclusively on the Central Election Commission, observers and sociologists joined before the vote to support an extensive exit polling operation on Election Day. The survey, organized by Democratic Initiatives, a civic organization that receives most of its funding from abroad, determined that the Our Ukraine bloc, should receive about 25 percent of the vote, the Communist Party, 20.5 percent; the For a United Ukraine Bloc, 10.6 percent; the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, 7.9 percent; the SDPU, 7 percent; and the Socialist Party, 6 percent. With a one percent margin of error, the exit poll became fairly indicative of what the eventual count would look like.

Just to be sure, the Our Ukraine Bloc and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc held parallel vote counts. Mr. Yuschenko said during a press conference as the returns were still coming in that he trusted the electorate, but not the election commissioners.

"To quote Stalin, if you will pardon me for doing so, elections are not determined by the voters, but by the vote counters," explained Mr. Yushchenko.

In the end, the Our Ukraine Bloc's alternative count showed their support to be a couple of percentage points higher than the CEC results, but did not indicate excessive error or fraud. The parallel vote by the Tymoshenko Bloc correlated even more closely to the CEC results.

The three parties and three blocs that crossed the 4 percent barrier will now set out to attempt to build factions large enough to form a majority, for which a minimum of 226 members is needed. A majority would allow a group to dictate the membership of the Verkhovna Rada presidium and appoint committee chairs.

If one of the blocs or parties succeeds in forming such a faction, President Kuchma has said he will allow that faction to form the next government as well.

The new Parliament is expected to be seated at the end of April or beginning of May, and will work for a four-year period.

* * *

In mayoral elections in the city of Kyiv also held on March 31 Oleksander Omelchenko easily won a third term, with a landslide 63 percent support shown by residents of the nation's capital.

Mr. Omelchenko's closest rival was another Omelchenko, this one named Hryhorii. The defeated Mr. Omelchenko, a national deputy and a member of the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, could muster only 16 percent support. Hryhorii Omelchenko, did get re-elected to Parliament, however.

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