Ivan Lozowy is president of the Institute of Statehood and Democracy
Ukraine’s general elections held on March 31, 2002 were marked by concerted government pressure. They included a great deal of falsifications and provocations. There were massive election violations and widespread abuse. Yet, in the end, in the words of one prominent Ukrainian politician, Ukraine’s elections were a “milestone” dividing post-Soviet Ukraine from pre-democratic Ukraine. As with most milestones, this one will become more evident as time passes. But the way in which the elections were conducted, as well as their results, give witness to Ukraine’s progress toward a democratic, civil society.
The Time of Preparation Was the Most Dangerous
Preparations for the elections began auspiciously - it could not,
of course, have been otherwise. Politicians of all stripes as well as bureaucrats
repeatedly affirmed Ukraine’s complete, total commitment to conducting
free and fair elections. Like a diligent schoolchild, the Central
Election Commission (CEC) went over its wish list for its own preparations:
Just before election day, the CEC proudly announced that almost
one thousand international observers were accredited for the elections.
It then, however, effectively cut their number in half by telling the observers
that they were “obliged” to travel in pairs - verbal instructions it kept
hidden from the public.
International organizations repeatedly emphasized - and not for the first election - the importance of a fair and balanced process before the voting. But the CEC did not publicize, before or after the voting, a host of election violations that compromised the fairness of the election process, from abuse of governmental position to vote buying, intimidation, and stacking election commissions with government supporters.
The Committee of Voters of Ukraine monitored the process assiduously. In January, it visited 577 population centers, 679 political party offices and 418 demonstrations and other public events. In addition to the most common violation, early campaigning, it also found that about 70 percent of all instances of abuse of government authority was in support of the pro-government coalition For a United Ukraine. Indeed, President Leonid Kuchma himself led the way with his Decree No. 2 from January 28, 2002, which declared a series of public events specifically in support of United Ukraine.
The Campaign Begins
Local government officials began to abuse their positions in earnest after the campaign officially started in February. At a meeting with entrepreneurs, Deputy Chairman of the Dnipropetrovsk City Executive Committee, Yevhen Zayets, stated that there would be no advertising in the city except on behalf of For a United Ukraine and he was quoted saying that “the population of Dnipropetrovsk has already made its choice in favor of the ‘For a United Ukraine’ coalition.” The mayor of Horlivka in the Donetsk oblast assembled the administrators of all government institutions and instructed them not to have any contacts with any parties or coalitions other than For a United Ukraine. In the Kharkiv oblast the Deputy Chairman of the oblast administration assembled teachers and government workers to campaign for United Ukraine. One school director suspended classes and forced students to campaign on the presidential party’s behalf. All the raion local government newspapers in the Chernivtsi oblast printed articles and advertisements exclusively on behalf of United Ukraine. In the Poltava Oblast, the Council Chairman and the head of the administration agitated assembled workers to vote for United Ukraine and implied that hidden cameras in voting booths would monitor how people voted.
The most disturbing aspect of such election violations was that they went largely unreported in the press. The Committee of Voters of Ukraine, despite several press conferences and regular press releases, saw the vast bulk of its materials remain unaccessed on its web site. The vast majority of media are government-owned or controlled by oligarchs who are closely tied to those in positions of power. They offer extensive coverage of the most uninteresting government activities and are predictably unpopular. In Ukraine, an independent and vibrant press is missing. . . .
The Results - A Shocker
Considering the scale of government intervention in the election campaign and the dominance of pro-government media, the election results were a shock.
The For a United Ukraine coalition was the principal pro-government bloc. It was headed by Kuchma’s right-hand man and head of the presidential administration Wolodymyr Lytvyn, followed by Prime Minister Anatoly Kinakh, and including many luminaries of the ruling elite, oligarchs, and regional bosses. This massive concentration of the “party of power” received a mere 12 percent of the vote. Several “Bankova” coalitions (known by the name of the street of the Presidential Administration) were created in order to take votes away United Ukraine’s chief competitors but received no more than 2 percent.
During the elections, former Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko’s “Our Ukraine” coalition emerged as the major pro-liberal, anti-presidential bloc. It received the highest percentage of the vote, 24 percent, despite active measures taken against it. Our Ukraine was castigated throughout the election process on state and oligarch-owned TV channels. Yushchenko was blocked at every turn during a countrywide tour, with meeting halls suddenly closed down, electricity cut off, and taped interviews never broadcast on local television. Russian television, still quite popular in eastern sections of the country, tried to paint Yushchenko as a neo-fascist and slavishly pro-American. Also, falsifications of ballots on election day that were observed by Ukrainian and international monitors were mostly directed against Our Ukraine. Yushchenko himself estimates that his bloc was deprived of an additional 8 to 12 percent by election falsifications and manipulation.
In yet another serious slap in the face of President Kuchma and his entourage, two fiercely oppositionist and anti-Kuchma coalitions, one led by the former deputy prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko and one by the Socialist Party leader Oleksandr Moroz, both made it into parliament with 7 percent each, despite consistently showing only 4 percent support in polls and being even more severely censored in the election period than “Our Ukraine.”
Meanwhile, the Communist Party, with its Stalinist ideology and pro-Russian orientation, received a severe setback. It came in second, receiving only 20 percent of the vote and having its total number of seats drop in half, thus falling to third place in parliament.
Why the Surprising Results?
Ukraine’s general elections on March 31, 2002 show the electorate’s mass refusal to be manipulated. An important prerequisite to a civil society is in the process of being fulfilled. The worst aspects of the post-totalitarian period, passivity and lack of independent thought and action, are dissipating.
At least four national movements to coordinate election observing were underway well before election day. Political parties competed to create networks of election observers covering all of the more than 33,000 polling stations across the country. Independent polling agencies attempted to assess the impact of probable falsifications. Another sign of the times: the Green Party of Ukraine fell to 1.3 percent from over 5 percent in the last elections after being criticized by ecological organizations for selling out its top candidate positions to oligarchs. Thirty-nine environmental NGOs had signed a joint statement dissassociating themselves and the ecological movement in general from the Green Party. NGOs played a more prominent role in these elections than in the past. The International Renaissance Foundation, for example, sponsored a national TV ad campaign, which pointed out that election commission members faced a jail term of up to five years for “interfering with the right of citizens to vote freely,” as per Article 157 of the Criminal Code. In the Crimea, the Tatars organized a get-out-the-vote campaign which raised participation levels, particularly among the young, with a consequent drop in votes cast for the communists.
Wolodymyr Lytvyn made clear the presidential bloc’s concern for the new prominence of civil society. In a campaign “coming out” article (“Civil Society: Myths and Realities.”), which was published on January 19, 2002 in Ukraine’s most widely circulated newspaper “Fakty,” Lytvyn criticized the concept of civil society as dangerous and compared the international character of NGO relations to growing coordination between international terrorists. The article caused a furor when it was found to be a plagiarized manipulation of an article written by Thomas Carothers that appeared in the winter 1999 issue of “Foreign Policy.” (Carothers said that Lytvyn “had the intention of writing something negative about civil society and used a version of my article to support this.”) Lytvyn’s attempt to denigrate civil society and its adherents was futile in the face of a general civic awakening of Ukrainians.
For Ukraine, the election results were the first real confirmation
that civil society is taking hold. Government initiated and sponsored “political
projects” collapsed. Ukraine still has a long way to go. Civil society
is only emerging as a rudimentary force. And despite the heavy election
monitoring, massive falsifications have gone uncorrected and unpunished.
Post-election manipulation is on the rise, with the Central Election Commission
invalidating several elections but none from For a United Ukraine.
Imprisonment for an election official who falsified votes will have to
wait for Ukraine’s transition to a real democracy. For now, Ukrainian voters
showed that they could not be bought by tens of millions of dollars spent
on campaigning.