Turning the pages back... April 7, 1998 (04/07/02)

Turning the pages back...

April 7, 1998

Four years ago to the day, Roman Woronowycz of our Kyiv Press Bureau reported from the Ukrainian capital that the Central Election Commission had announced the official results of the party list voting to the Verkhovna Rada, but had put off publishing official results in the vote for single-mandate representatives.

CEC Chairman Mykhailo Riabets said at a press conference that the commission had received so many complaints of election law violations and fraud in the single-mandate balloting portion of Ukraine's new election system that it would withhold publishing results for the time being.

Mr. Woronowycz noted that both parties and individuals who took part in the March 29, 1998, elections, independent Ukraine's second parliamentary ballot, alleged widespread fraud, although most international and domestic observer organizations said election violations were minor and did not affect the outcomes of the races.

The official results at press time four years ago were: Communist Party, 84 seats; Rukh Party, 32; Socialist/Agrarian Party bloc, 29; Greens, 19; National Democratic Party, 17; Hromada Party, 16; Progressive Socialist Party, 14; Social Democratic Party, 14.

When the party voting results cited above are combined with preliminary single-mandate results, Mr. Woronowycz reported, the Communists were guaranteed a strong bloc of 123 seats, but not the absolute majority of 226 needed to control the Parliament.

When presented geographically, the election picture divided the map of Ukraine into three distinctive ideological sections. As one moved from west to the east, the political picture turned redder and redder.

In western Ukraine the Rukh Party decisively took five of eight oblasts: Volyn, Rivne, Lviv, Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk. Chernivtsi, at the Moldovan border, went to the Communists, while the Transcarpathian region voted for the Social Democratic Party (United).

In central Ukraine the Socialists held a strong grip on the Khmelnytskyi and Cherkasy oblasts and came close to the Communists in the other eight central oblasts. The Communists and the Socialists combined for 36 percent of the vote in these oblasts. Once east of the Dnipro River, with the exception of the Poltava Oblast, it was all Communists, including the southern Ukrainian autonomous republic of Crimea.

Of the nine eastern oblasts, only Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk did not go Communist. The Sumy region was a stronghold of the Progressive Socialist Party, and Dnipropetrovsk was in the Hromada Party camp, as shown by the 36 percent vote for the party headed by Pavlo Lazarenko.

"Election authorities announce official results of party list voting" by Roman Woronowycz, The Ukrainian Weekly, April 12, 1998, Vol. LXVI, No. 15.

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