Verkhovna Rada rejects calls for complete recount of elections (04/09/06)

Verkhovna Rada rejects calls for complete recount of elections

by Zenon Zawada
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada on April 4 rejected a recount of the parliamentary elections, ignoring protests from politicians and their supporters who alleged that millions of ballots weren't counted properly and that the elections were once again intentionally falsified.

None of the winning blocs and parties supported the recount, with the exception of the Communist Party of Ukraine.

Verkhovna Rada Chairman Volodymyr Lytvyn, who spent more than $6.5 million on an advertising campaign for his self-named political bloc that won only 2.4 percent of votes, said the elections were fair but the vote count was falsified through the use of new technologies.

"The world's practices truly don't perform recounts, but the world's practices don't know Ukrainian practices," Mr. Lytvyn said. His comment drew applause in the Rada.

Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko alleged that election commission members in the Kirovohrad Oblast had stolen votes from his party and counted them toward the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc.

"In every bag that is being opened today between 50 and 100 votes were taken from the Communists for the advantage of the Tymoshenko Bloc," Mr. Symonenko said.

The Communist Party won the Kirovohrad Oblast in the 2002 elections, but the Tymoshenko Bloc won it this year.

"I believe that we, today, should seriously discuss how capital has corrupted the whole system and how it subjugated it today," Mr. Symonenko said.

Outside the Parliament, more than 300 protesters from all over Ukraine waved the flags of losing political parties and voiced their complaints over what they viewed as fraudulent elections.

Leading the protests were Inna Bohoslovska, leader of the Viche Party, and Volodymyr Marchenko, a leader of Natalia Vitrenko's People's Opposition Bloc.

"The Orangists promised democracy and honest elections, but everyone understands there were no honest elections!" shouted Mr. Marchenko, whose bloc had 2.93 percent of the vote, coming closest of those who failed to make it to the 3 percent barrier

Valentyna Klusenko, 59, an election observer who arrived from Zhytomyr to join the protests, said she's convinced results were inflated and falsified. While observing the vote count, she noticed the ballots weren't being separated into piles, as required by procedure. Then, a group of six commission members surrounded the table "like a swarm of bees" and made a mess of the ballots.

Afterward she wanted to verify the ballots but the commission members denied her the chance. Later the commission also denied her the opportunity to examine its protocol report and verify whether it reflected the number of ballots counted, she said.

"I wanted to see transparent, honest elections which reflected the people's will," Ms. Klusenko said. "I didn't see that at my polling station."

Borys Dziadevych, 60, a district election commission chair from Zhytomyr, said he was shocked that Volodymyr Lytvyn's People's Bloc didn't pass the 3 percent barrier. All the pre-election polls predicted the bloc would make it into the parliament.

"I can't accept that Lytvyn didn't make it," Mr. Dziadevych said. "It's some kind of technology!"

Ms. Bohoslovska alleged that millions of votes were falsified and added to the Party of the Regions and Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc counts. "This is absolutely a betrayal of democracy and honest elections in Ukraine," Ms. Bohoslovska said at a press conference later in the day.

In one district, she said between 200 and 300 members of her party cast votes that never appeared in the final protocol reports.

The Viche Party has submitted hundreds of complaints to election commissions on the local, regional and the national levels, Ms. Bohoslovska said.

In the case of one Kharkiv district election commission, 2,000 voters were registered, but more than 6,000 votes were counted, said Ihor Yeremieyev, a parliamentary candidate with Volodymyr Lytvyn's People's Bloc.

Various party leaders spent the week presenting such items at press conferences as proof the elections had egregious flaws.

Joining the parties alleging election falsification was the Pora-Reforms and Order bloc. "This vote, first of all, reflects the tendency of an unraveling of democratic processes in our country for the conservation of power," said Yevhen Zolotariov, a Pora leader who led the tent city during the Orange Revolution.

"This vote also serves as justification for holding doubts about the legitimacy of the newly elected Verkhovna Rada. It attests that old politicians with old practices are triumphing, always placing their narrow interests above those of society." Mr. Zolotariov criticized President Viktor Yushchenko for not exercising enough political will to hold the recount.

Mr. Yushchenko stated days earlier that he viewed the elections as democratic, but he was not satisfied with the vote count in several oblasts.

Offering evidence that the vote was indeed fair, Democratic Initiatives Fund President Ilko Kucheriv stressed that the results of his organization's exit poll closely reflected the election's final results.

In fact, the exit poll projected more votes for the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc and the Party of the Regions - the two political forces that bore much criticism from many parties for having inflated results.

"The maximum discrepancy in results between the exit poll and Central Election Commission's results is 1.3 percent for the Tymoshenko Bloc and no more than 0.5 percent for the other parties," Mr. Kucheriv said. "This testifies that significant falsifications during these elections didn't take place."

The exit poll, financed by four Western embassies, three Western international foundations and the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, was conducted by the Democratic Initiatives Fund, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology and the Razumkov Ukrainian Center for Economic and Political Research.

Voting was free and transparent, but the vote-counting process was long and disorganized, according to a report released on April 3 by the Committee of Voters of Ukraine (CVU).

The vote count violated procedural standards, the CVU reported, especially those that govern the transfer of documents to the regional and oblast commissions, as well as the verification of protocol reports.

"All this created conditions for abuse during the vote count, and offered justification for numerous complaints against the election's results," the report said.

However, there isn't enough evidence to prove that there were enough violations that influenced the election's results, the report said. Instead, the CVU recommended recounts at those district election commissions where violations are believed to have occurred.

"The revealed violations don't offer the justification to demand a full recount of the Verkhovna Rada vote," the report said. "For every solid complaint from an observer or commission member regarding violations during the vote count, a court can order the responsible district election commission to conduct a recount at that individual district."

Several territorial election commissions, or those at the oblast level, have already rejected the results for city elections, the report noted.

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