Will voters be willing to pay?

Parliament's temporary presidential election oversight committee is alarmed by the preliminary results of the process of forming territorial election committees. Under the presidential elections law, each such committee must be approved by the local council. The oversight committee is going to challenge some of their resolutions in court, because in many regions these election committees turn out to beheaded by representatives of only one presidential candidate, Leonid Kuchma, People's Deputy Oleksandr Yeliashkevych declared at an August 31 news conference.

The current alignment of forces on 226 territorial commissions is as follows 80 leading posts (35.6%) occupied by Leonid Kuchma's representatives; 22% by Petro Symonenko's; 18% by Hennady Udovenko's; 16% by Vitaly Kononov's and Oleksandr Tkachenko's; 14% by Oleksandr Moroz's; 12% by Volodymyr Oliynyk's; 11% by Vasyl Onopenko's; 10% by Yevhen Marchuk's, Yuri Kostenko's, and Natalia Vitrenko's; 3% by Oleksandr Bazyliuk's and Oleksandr Rzhavsky's; 2% by Yuri Karmazin's; and 1% by Mykola Haber's.

Obviously, all the presidential candidates are represented on the territorial commissions. However, Mr. Yeliashkevych claims that there is a definite shift in the leadership in favor of the one candidate, the current President. The head of the parliamentary interim oversight committee adds that the proportional principle is totally ignored in certain regions and the Crimea. On the peninsula, five out of ten heads of the election committees represent Leonid Kuchma and the other five, Petro Symonenko. In Volyn oblast, all five committees are headed by Kuchma people. In Ivano-Frankivsk oblast, the same is true of five out of six election committees, with one being headed by a Hennady Udovenko man. In Luhansk oblast, the President's men are at the head of ten out of twelve committees; nine out of twelve in Lviv oblast.

In the Mr. Yeliashkevych's words, this picture shows that local councils approving such membership abided not by the law but by «certain recommendations.» He believes that such shifts will not be avoided, because far from all candidates want fair elections. The oversight committee, however, will press for changes in the presidential election law at one of its first sessions, so as to even out any such advantages gained by a single candidate. Namely, some of the clauses must be restated, providing for all members of these territorial election committees to receive the original report right after the votes are counted.

Another interesting detail is that the Central Election Committee's recent resolutions stipulate budget payments for only one territorial committee's post, that of its head (chairman). In other words, one of the candidates now has yet another, financial, advantage.

And one final intriguing fact: in Kherson oblast, two chairmen of territorial committees were simultaneously put forward by the President and Communist Party (and this considering Mr. Kuchma repeated declarations that Ukraine will finally collapse if the Left candidate is elected President).