Crimea leads in rigging, nearly all local voters claim
A number of voters in the Crimea who observed cases of election rigging are demanding that the results be declared invalid. Topping the list of shoddy voting organizers is the Symferopil Territorial Electoral Commission, forced by public pressure to invalidate the results of the mayoral elections last Wednesday.
The Crimean branch of the Our Ukraine National Union (NSNU) party declared that 14 polling stations failed to issue Crimean Supreme Council ballots to some voters. In Sudak, many ballots bore a note stating that some parties had stood down, which was not true. In all Crimean districts there were signs that ballots had been tampered with by means of ballpoint corrections, which is strictly prohibited by law.
“With due account of the above-mentioned facts, the Crimean branch of Our Ukraine National Union is insisting that the elections at all levels in the Crimean Autonomous Republic be declared invalid,” Volodymyr Shkliar, parliamentarian and leader of the NSNU Crimean branch, told The Day. “We want a fair and transparent election, and we are not going to put up with the fact that some political forces are once again trying to rig the results of the Ukrainian people’s free choice or to hinder this process in some other way.”
Parliamentarian Leonid Hrach told the Crimea’s Public Prosecutor Viktor Shemchuk that “it was a mass-scale practice at most polling stations, both in Symferopil and other Crimean regions, to misplace ballot papers in favor of a certain party and enter falsified data into the reports. Polling stations are now submitting reports and other electoral documents, including ballots, to territorial (district) electoral commissions privately through some of the commission members, instead of doing this openly at commission meetings, which must begin as soon as the first vote count reports arrive and continue uninterrupted until the voting results have been determined.
For example, Symferopil’s municipal territorial commission has been accepting ballot papers and other documents since March 27 in the basement rather than at the premises where it is supposed to hold meetings. They break the rules when they receive documents (in sacks, without duly checking the contents and seals of special packets). Vote count reports are being accepted separately, in a different room of City Hall by an incomplete commission.
In some cases local commission members simply dumped the sacks of documentation at the territorial commission’s doorstep without waiting for their turn and left without signing a transfer report. On the night of March 28 the territorial commission stopped working, and all its members went home without sealing the basement, where election documents, including ballot papers, were stored, thereby leaving the place open to unauthorized persons, who could easily steal documents or plant additional ballot papers. On several occasions official observers and candidates running for the Crimean Supreme Council censured the commission members and on March 28, 2006, drew up an “Act on Election Law Violations.” Hrach believes that “all these facts show that there were premeditated and persistent attempts to foil or rig the elections in the Crimea.”
More than 10 party organizations in Yalta, including Union, Renaissance, European Capital, NSNU, SPDU(O), the Green Party, and Lytvyn’s Popular Bloc, have urged President Yushchenko and the head of Ukraine’s Central Electoral Commission, Yaroslav Davydovych, to invalidate the elections and declare a rerun election to the Yalta City Council.
Their message states, “There was a large number of violations in the elections to the Yalta City Council on March 26, which had an essential impact on the voting results.” The signatories emphasize that they cannot accept the results of the elections to the Yalta City Council. They want representatives of the Prosecutor- General’s Office of Ukraine to come to Yalta to determine whether these elections were lawful.
The Yalta-based Southern Front has announced that its activists “caught election riggers red-handed in inner Yalta and Greater Yalta.” They found and documented many stacks of envelopes containing ballots that voters had cast for “wrong” candidates and parties to the Ukrainian and Crimean parliaments. There were successful attempts to replace these packets with ones containing ballots in favor of the Party of the Regions.
According to a Southern Front volunteer, “members of the Yanukovych, Vitrenko, Kunitsyn, and the For the Crimea blocs were in cahoots with each other.” Ukrainian parliament votes were always replaced with ballots in favor of the Party of the Regions, while Crimean parliament votes were always replaced with those in favor of the For Yanukovych bloc. Votes in the Greater Yalta mayoral elections were replaced with ballots marking the Party of the Regions candidate Serhiy Braiko. Votes to the Yalta City Council were distributed under a prearranged proportional pattern between the Yanukovych, Vitrenko, Kunitsyn, and For the Crimea blocs. Observers also managed to film violations at Livadia and at Yalta’s central polling station.
The elections were in fact sabotaged. Observers and the “injured” parties are surprised to discover over and over again “lost” Yalta votes in their favor. The parties outside the “group of four” are recalling their representatives from the electoral commissions. The Greater Yalta commissions are paralyzed. The situation in the city among bureaucrats and the almost “victorious” candidates remains extremely tense. All the Crimean news agencies are reporting these facts.
Meanwhile, 98 representatives and followers of the Kunitsyn bloc have issued a statement saying, “On March 26-27, well-known hostile political forces in the city and district of Symferopil committed a number of perfidious and criminal actions, replacing ballot boxes, rigging the final vote count reports, deceiving electoral commission members, and barring the people’s meritorious candidates from voting in order to clear the way for their own appointees.
“We demand that the authorities, judges, and prosecutors deal resolutely and quickly with violations that occurred during the election campaign at many polling stations and harshly punish those guilty of abuse. We are submitting dozens of lawsuits on violations committed during the elections and the vote count, as well as videos and other documentary evidence.”
In the first two days after the vote the Crimean Electoral Commission failed to publicize any information on the election results, and the Crimean media claim that “the Crimean Electoral Commission is hiding the election results from the people.” Electoral commission representatives say in turn that “the commission has not yet received a single vote count report from the regions and therefore has nothing to say to the press.” The Crimean party organizations that conducted a parallel count of votes are so far announcing contradictory and hence dubious information.
