Vicious Circle of Blind Democracy

Voters stepping into Polling Station No. 14 at the House of Culture of Kyiv’s UTOS (UPP- 1) Training-production Enterprise felt somewhat uneasy watching hefty fellows wearing combat fatigues with nightsticks, pistols, and even submachine guns crowding the room, standing in line for ballots. Those were Berkut antiterrorist squad men and we were told that they lived at a nearby dorm and dropped in to vote before reporting for duty.

UTOS is the acronym for the Ukrainian Society of the Blind and we visited the polling station to watch the process (there are 26,000 blind citizens in Ukraine with the right to vote, including 3,000 in Kyiv). For the first time these people were promised an opportunity to cast their ballots independently and democratically (at least in places officially referred to as compact communities), using Braille. The Embassy of the Netherlands contributed $1,000 for the production of special ballots.

But then we were disappointed by Anna Shcherba, chairperson of the local election committee, said, “They will have to vote using the old method, relying on their relatives, friends, people living next door — those they can trust. We have the special forms, but we can’t use them because the holes in them do not tally with the boxes to be checked in the ballot. And the bottom line ‘No to all candidates’ is missing.” We checked and saw it was so.

The Day was informed by Petro Omelchuk, director of the UTOS Audio Recording and Publishing House (responsible for making the special ballots for the blind), that they received a defective specimen for making the forms from the Ukrainian Regional Initiative Fund and since CEC refused to supply an original ballot they could not check the accuracy of the ballots for the blind.

Anna Cherebiako, 85, and her daughter Halyna say they do not want Communists in power, so they voted for the Rukh diplomat Udovenko. They also think that the current President’s reelection will result in robbing Ukraine of what little is still left here to steal. “Whoever comes in third, our Lord is with us, and He will deliver us from our perils,” the women feel sure. Good for them, they are believers. What about the agnostics?

Olha Lohynova, another blind employee, chose Vitrenko after listening to her on the radio. “She is a tough woman and promises to get back our savings deposits. She just might succeed, but what we need in the first place is discipline and order,” she told us.

We were talking in the lobby and there was music in the background. It was familiar and then I heard the lyrics, “Enticing merry- go-round, going round and round, in one vicious circle...” Couldn’t be better worded, the situation I mean. The ballots for the blind incompatible with the original. If they were made right the blind could vote independently. But who is going to help this country that has gone blind in its information darkness, lost in economic and spiritual chaos?

I took my son with me to an ordinary Kyiv grade school accommodating a polling station that night. I wanted to give a lesson in democracy. We voted together for this lesson not to be the last one ever.