The Ghost of Lazarenko’s Achievement Hovers Over Dnipropetrovsk
In Dnipropetrovsk, representatives of the Our Ukraine election bloc have accused local authorities of intending to fix the elections in favor of the For a United Ukraine (ZaYedU) bloc. The very course of the election campaign has allegedly convinced Viktor Yushchenko’s followers that officials are trying not only to influence the election campaign but also to establish “a mechanism to influence the counting of votes,” Leonid Talko, deputy leader of Our Ukraine’s regional headquarters, told a press conference.
The Our Ukraine representatives described the Dnipropetrovsk officials’ diabolical scheme in detail. In their opinion, the authorities first pushed their people into district and local commissions via certain parties (with lucrative proposals also coming, as Mr. Talko admitted, to PRP and UNR in the Yushchenko bloc), then, to secure a majority in the commissions, they began to “squeeze” undesirable persons out. Thus, according to Our Ukraine’s regional headquarters, the local commissions of district No. 24 allegedly saw seven chairpersons, eight deputy chairs, and seven secretaries replaced. The Yushchenko people also cited similar figures with respect to Dnipropetrovsk’s other majoritarian voting districts.
Our Ukraine reps believe this process was crowned with a wave of press conferences at which government- sponsored sociologists were allegedly getting public opinion ready for the victory of For a United Ukraine, announcing target figures that surprisingly coincide with those of the Hromada party in previous elections. “With the administrative resource at their disposal, local office holders want to repeat Lazarenko’s achievement in Dnipropetrovsk oblast,” Mr. Talko said. Announcing their suspicions, Mr. Yushchenko’s followers, who claim, without undue modesty, to be favorites in the election race, say simultaneously that they will not to sue the officials for their misdeeds. They justify their more than strange standpoint with the wish, as they say, not to waste time. Headquarters leaders say they pin the main hopes on their own system of vote counting.
Yet, Dnipropetrovsk oblast has long suspected Mr. Yushchenko’s followers of a double game, considering Our Ukraine something like the flip side of For a United Ukraine. Local observers claim the only difference is that the Our Ukraine and For a United Ukraine projects were set up for the western and eastern Ukrainian electorates respectively. Journalists put this question to Mr. Yushchenko himself, resentful of the allegedly less than gentlemanly behavior of local bureaucrats and For a United Ukraine members during his visit to Dnipropetrovsk oblast. And although the former premier rejected the allegations that he was playing a one-sided game together with For a United Ukraine, encroaching on some forbidden territory seemed to be his only problem. This can also be the cause of all Our Ukraine’s defeats in Dnipropetrovsk oblast, for the party organizations that make up this bloc number a few hundred stalwarts and rank-and- file members, while the whole electorate accounts for just a few percent. Bickering in the Our Ukrainian ranks has long been a byword: having quarreled with each others, they never managed to nominate a single candidate for Dnipropetrovsk mayor, while the regional election headquarters was established only in January.
It goes without saying that Mr. Yushchenko’s followers are now pinning all their hopes on his charisma. The sooner the day of voting, the more apocalyptic the people sound. It is thus not ruled out that statements about the unavoidable vote tampering by the authorities are aimed at either concealing one’s own political ineffectiveness or laying the groundwork for declaring the results invalid.
