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31 марта 2006 | Alexander Lurie
"BITTER FRUIT OF POMERANETS"
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"Trust, but double check"
Well, we all know that it is better to see once than to here a 100 times. This wisdom became even clearer after Ukrainian Presidential elections in 2004.
Why did the development of Ukrainian democracy draw our attention? We, "The Central-European Group of Political Monitoring" were formed a few years ago by social and political activists of Europe, Asia and Africa. We rely on conservative values of Christian morals. For us the LAW is above all in any political process. However, the law itself is not the ultimate veracity; above it is only one thing - a clearly expressed Will of People, since the law serves the people. To us, any technical manipulation of the law or people - will is a crime. This is why we are especially interested in the election mechanisms in young democratic countries like Ukraine.
We perceived the Ukrainian elections of 2004 as a definite expression of peoples - will for uprising. Unfortunately, even after a thorough study of the information available on the event, we could not sort out what really happened: the victory of the spontaneously up risen people or a political coup skillfully orchestrated to support the interests of one of the Ukrainian elite groups. Therefore, this time we decided to travel to Ukraine to witness the election process. We received an invitation from an international organization "For Fair Elections" that offered us an unlimited excess to the most interesting from our point of view regions with the only requirement that we remain impartial observers of the event.
Local Map
The fruits of "Pomerenets" revolution” are most noticeable in Kiev. The city became a vibrant European capital that attracts tourists and businessmen. It’s clean, well groomed with a constantly growing airport. Unfortunately, only the capital took this light-speed journey into the future. L’vov and Ternopol, where our group had spent most of the time looked actually older than before and quite run down.
Even 15 years ago Lvov used to be one of the most beautiful cities of Ukraine. Now magnificent buildings in the historical center start to look like ancient ruins. Infrastructures are neglected, the roads look like they were destroyed on purpose, the sidewalks are icy and the street lighting is scarce. As a popular quote has it: “the only European among us is the Government” – indeed, the district administrations’ block is clean and manicured like English gardens, contrasting with the adjacent neighborhoods. After a few personal interactions with the administration you get an impression that these well fed and debonair people live and work in a different, truly European country and get European salaries.
For the rest of the population… the prices on food and basic goods are quite European, while the salaries are about 10 times lower than those in Europe.
Dura lex
One could assume that unlike the ordinary citizens, Ukrainian lawmakers are far more experienced in intricate democratic procedures. Sadly, this did not appear to be true, at least as far as election law is concerned. When you read the law, you get an impression that the authors did not bother to familiarize themselves with the world practices of election organization. At a first glance, the mistakes seem small and unimportant, but after more thorough analysis it becomes obvious that multiple complications and deviations from election technique can make the process of honest expression of peoples’ will impossible or so ambiguous that re-elections would be required. We would like to think that the mistakes came from genuine inexperience and not from malicious intents.
For example, it seems wrong to allow for an open registration of an unlimited number of parties. As a result, 45 (!) parties participated in the elections. The law did not have any regulation mechanism to control that. The voting procedure itself become complicated, because 74 cm long bulletins were printed in very small font, which made them hard to read and understand.
Another complicating factor was simultaneous Supreme Rada, District, City, Region and local Mayor elections all taking place on March 26. Thus, a citizen was asked to navigate through 4 overwhelmingly long bulletins. It is also noteworthy, that the bulletins are, of course, the documents of great importance and should be strictly accounted for. However, only Supreme Rada bulletins were numbered, which simply left ample room for opportunities to mishandle the voting process. Voting of the military personnel serving at districts other than those of their regional registration and Ukrainian citizens living abroad also caused a great deal of confusion and opportunities for multiple votes.
The “D” Day
The election law requires that all the election campaign activities are stopped during the 24h preceding the elections. On the surface this requirement was met, especially in downtown areas, but some giant billboards with slightly camouflaged messages supporting a president of the party “For Our Ukraine” were left on the outskirts:
It seems that no serious thought was put into choosing the election date. This is very unfortunate, because as a result, the elections took place on the first day of the daylight savings. Thus, the election committees began to work an hour earlier and by the end of the day, keeping in mind all the technical complications mentioned above, were completely exhausted. We need to point out, that the members of the election committees demonstrated a remarkable level of commitment and diligence. But even their devotion could not override the destructive impact of the defective election law, frequently changing election committees’ chairmen and members and, often, their unfamiliarity with the procedure. All this, in combination with the poor utilization of space at the election centers, lead to formation of long lines to the voting stations.
Such commotion, crowds, noise, and disorder created the atmosphere that was conducive to breaking the procedural rules, for instance entering the voting booth in pairs. On the other hand, crowded election stations indicate a high level of political responsibility and activity of the voters. Unfortunately, the maximum capacity of the voting stations could not handle the amount of voters that showed up on March 26. Based on our observations, the percentage of people who voted in L’vov and district was about 63-67% of the total eligible voters, which pretty accurately reflected the useful capacity of the voting stations.
Upon the completion of the actual voting the exhausted committee members now had to manually sort out the bulletins by type and count the votes. Needless to say after a long and hectic day their eyes were very tired and manual count of votes was a challenging task.
Goals and Means.
In Europe the democracy is a given and undeniable part of life that is taken for granted. In Ukraine the democracy is like pure oxygen – refreshing and exhilarating, but deadly in large quantities. During its term, the President Yuschenko and his team failed to stabilize the economy of Ukraine and work out a comprehensive internal and international political approach. As result, pro-presidential forces lost the elections.
Ukraine spent a billion griven, (that converts to171 M euro or $207 M) to cover the cost of the election. This is an astronomical amount considering the poor economic state of Ukraine. Not a single griven, however, was spent to tell the citizens that the democracy does not mean confrontation, but collaboration of various political groups aimed at prosperity of the country they all live in.
We hope that conscious acceptance of true democracy soon will replace the current aggressive acceptance of national belonging. |
источник: Expert Center - ICES |
 назад  наверх |
 принт версия |
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05.02 | Давид Петросян
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04.02 | Ярослав Шимов
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04.02 | Ольга Радько
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04.02 | Давид Арутюнов
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04.02 | Артем Полетаев
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03.02 | Богдан Цырдя
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03.02 | Павел Волошин
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