What Falsification? Look at the Billboard!...

When counting the votes at the night the Central Election Committee displayed a packed house. The electorate’s choice was getting clear: Kuchma-Symonenko-Vitrenko (plus Moroz after 7 a.m.). Some took this as a “justification of public forecasts” (e.g., Inter Channel), others as a personal tragedy (a team of BBC journalists). At 1 a.m. the journalists learned the preliminary turnout after that an intermission was announced and it was then Oleksandr Volkov turned up at CEC and was later said to have killed a victory bottle of Hetman with Mykhailo Riabets. Toward the end of the election day, CEC announced the receipt of 37 complaints pointing to transgressions of the election law. Mr. Riabets, however, declared that they would not make any substantial impact on the election outcome. Also last night, Oleksandr Chernenko, Press Secretary of the Electors’ Committee, told The Day that there was evidence of substantial transgressions, including uneven allocation of ballots, so that at some polling stations there was short supply by midday.

Apparently, the surplus amount was put to “good use” at others. According to Mykhailo Riabets, there was no information from certain constituencies until the morning of October 1. Was it because the turnout did not tally with Leonid Kuchma’s headquarters’ plan? For example, at Constituency No. 100, in Kirovohrad, Leonid Kuchma collected votes placing him fourth.

In addition, there was the problem of fake ballots, found even in newly supplied stacks. But it was still of no substance for CEC, wasn’t it? In response to fresh complaints Mykhailo Riabets would say that he lacked the right levers to pull. Indeed, how can one pull rank or authority having none? Anyway, CEC’s stand was made clear in backstage exchanges: we are not meddling and will follow the winner. And the implication was that democracy would not be on the winning side. There is no secret about the winner having transgressed a dozen or so articles of the election and criminal laws (e.g., ban on canvassing on the part of government officials; ban on monopoly control over the media, using one’s office for canvassing purposes, including transport and communications; ban on bribing the electorate). The Editors received phone calls informing them about transgression throughout the campaign. For example, Mykola Tiutiun, resident of Kyiv, stated a day before the election about thousands of copies of the newspaper Samovriaduvannia [Self-government], with an official print run of 60,000, scattered in the doorways of his apartment building with a message from Dmytro Hulenko, Chairman of the Moskovsky District Council and District State Administration (combining the two posts contrary to law!) urging votes for the current President. Yesterday morning a phone call from Mykola Pidhorny, a pensioner, told about bribing voters: 30-50 hryvnias for an aye, depending on the electoral district; elsewhere the reward was a sack of sugar or flour. A woman manager of a Kyiv market (she did not identify herself, of course) called to explain the generosity of these handouts: a couple of months prior to the election every store manager was ordered to provide a certain amount of consumer goods.

In any case, toward morning Mykhailo Riabets presented a much more cheerful sight. Electronic billboard graphics were eloquent and not a hint of falsification! Or so he maintained. About 3 a.m. US Ambassador Stephen Pifer paid a visit but resolutely declined comment to the media. Some say Mr. Pifer is still recovering from the US-financed and ill-organized “Epicenter” debate when the Ambassador had to wait, along with the others, in front of the locked doors of the 1+1 Studio (that never opened) last Friday.