Voters' committee voices concerns about state of district election bodies (03/19/06)

Voters' committee voices concerns about state of district election bodies

by Zenon Zawada
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - The formation and activity of district election commissions remains in a "catastrophic" state, Committee of Voters of Ukraine (CVU) Chair Ihor Popov said at a March 14 press conference.

Virtually all the district election commissions began their work significantly behind schedule, and nearly a third of them haven't even begun to fully function, he said.

"The Ukrainian government must take quick and decisive steps to save the elections," Mr. Popov said. "The situation today in providing the organizational and technical means to conduct elections is catastrophic, primarily in organizing the work of district election commissions."

District elections commissions are those local voting stations where Ukrainians will cast their ballots. A Ukrainian oblast can have anywhere between 900 and 1,800 district commissions, and about 33,000 will operate nationally.

The main reason for the disorder, according to a CVU report released on March 14, is the constant turnover of commission members and an inability to appoint a chair, an assistant and a secretary. Few Ukrainians are interested in serving on the commissions, a job that requires an immense amount of work for payof $10 per day.

Practically all the district election commissions have secured locations, but many lack heating, telephones and financing, the report said.

Executive government bodies (the Presidential Secretariat) and local city governments haven't provided adequate material and technical means to organize the elections, the report said.

Mr. Popov lauded the Verkhovna Rada for its March 14 vote to allocate an additional $27 million to fund the election commissions.

Nevertheless, election day on March 26 will be "very complicated," Mr. Popov said.

Voters can expect to wait in line at least one hour in order to vote, he said. Polls will be open from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.

At that point, a 15-hour ballot-counting process will begin and continue until 1 p.m. the next day, Mr. Popov said. District commission members will have to work a 31-hour shift. They won't be alone, as both Ukrainian and international election observers will also have to pull the all-nighter to ensure ballots are properly counted.

Voter lists are unsatisfactory, the report said, and up to 10 percent of the lists are inaccurate. Many of the inaccuracies crop up as a result of "automatic translations" of Russian names into Ukrainian.

In some cases, voter lists are organized alphabetically, instead of the proper way, which is by buildings and apartments, the report said. District election commissions have largely failed to organize the processes to review and correct the lists, the report said.

Law enforcement authorities have failed to arrest and prosecute those identified as violating or exploiting administrative resources, which the committee finds "disturbing," its report said.

"This has led to a continued increase in the amount of administrative and criminal interference in the election process during the first half of March," Mr. Popov noted.

For example, the mayor of the village of Makiyivka in the Kyiv Oblast, along with his entourage, forced villagers to join Lytvyn's People's Bloc and vote for him, threatening to fire them from government-paying jobs.

Criminal acts included arson and assaults.

In Konstiantynivka, a city in the Donetsk Oblast, Party of the Regions supporters carried out several attacks on Our Ukraine campaigners in late February and early March.

In the same city, someone called the chair of the territorial election commission, who belonged to the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, and threatened to harm her son and burn her home if she didn't quit the commission.

On February 28, Mykola Azarov, former prime minister and Party of the Regions candidate for national deputy provoked a conflict between his supporters and Our Ukraine campaigners in Sverdlovsk, a city in the Luhansk Oblast.

In a speech he accused the Our Ukraine camp of shameless tactics for hanging orange bands throughout the town. After his speech, members of his audience attacked an Our Ukraine campaign stand.

In Lviv on March 6 arsonists set fire to the campaign headquarters of the Party of the Regions candidate for mayor, Petro Pysarchuk. The fire burned campaign literature and technical equipment.

Campaign chair Yurii Berezovskyi also reported that Party of the Regions supporters have been attacked in Lviv, and its billboards damaged.

The bright side to this year's election, Mr. Popov said, is that only very minimal vote fraud is expected to take place.

The Committee of Voters of Ukraine is financed by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Eurasia Foundation, the United States Agency for International Development, the Westminster Foundation and the Civil Liberties Foundation.

Its latest report is available on the website http://www.cvu.org.ua.

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