“On your mark!”
Election campaign starts soon
The parliamentary election campaign in Ukraine is just a few days away: the official start is scheduled for Nov. 26. A resolution to this effect was passed on Nov. 18 by all 13 attending members of the Central Electoral Commission (CEC). There could hardly have been a different outcome. Yet, judging by promotion clips on TV and numerous billboards, political parties began to act long before CEC chairman Yaroslav Davydovych gave the official go-ahead.
The final election budget, a staggering UAH 547,200,000, was also finally approved. Incidentally, this amount changed more than once. Last May Davydovych estimated the feast of democracy at UAH 415 million. In August the amount rose two times to UAH 900 million. Then the CEC demanded 555 million and has now obtained 8,000 less.
The head of the CEC reminded MPs that if they procrastinate with approving the 2006 budget, this might make it difficult to fund the election campaign. Plans are also afoot to allot UAH 158 million from the state budget to hold local elections.
Davydovych believes that the parliamentary elections and local-government elections should be held at different times. “The best solution is to hold local council elections in October or November 2006,” he said, adding that by this time the Verkhovna Rada will have been elected and begun its regular proceedings.
In general, the law on local council elections is a sore point with Davydovych. He says many articles in it are “mindless” and “cannot be used; they should be withdrawn.” “But, unfortunately, I see that the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine is now preoccupied with other matters... The situation with local elections is very complicated, and obviously there is no one to protect local self-government. I assume there will be a lot of problems, and all this is on the conscience of our parliament. People are just heartless, I don’t understand them.”
Meanwhile, judging by the CEC chairman’s words, things are not too bad as far as the parliamentary elections are concerned. This time there will even be special paper ballots with watermarks and two threads that glow. Constituency commissions will receive special equipment to verify the authenticity of ballots. “I’ve met my counterpart from Kazakhstan: they pay seven euros for a kilo of this paper, but we’ve struck a deal for an option that is several times cheaper,” Davydovych boasted.
Another new feature of these elections is that all complaints will now be referred to Kyiv’s Pechersky Court. According to Davydovych, a number of law firms dealt with such complaints in the last elections, so the CEC “had to stay awake all night long and consider them... It will now be the court’s problem whether it will be able to cope with all the complaints,” Davydovych said with a wry grin.
Parliamentarian Raisa Bohatyriova “is bombarding the CEC with parliamentary queries” about a changed configuration and number of constituencies in the regions. The point is that the new version of the parliamentary election law sets out that constituencies should be formed on the basis of an approximately equal number of polling stations rather than an equal number of voters, as was the case before. Therefore, the number of constituencies will decrease from ten to seven in Kyiv and from 23 to 17 in Donetsk Oblast. There will also be a smaller number of constituencies in the Crimea, Luhansk, and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts. Davydovych pointed out that the Supreme Council of the Crimea has already formally requested the CEC not to reduce the number of constituencies. “But we are forming constituencies in compliance with the law rather than with some politicians or local officials,” the head of the Central Electoral Commission added.
To sum up, despite certain problems, Davydovych is optimistic about the upcoming elections. “I think these elections will be cleaner and more streamlined because we’ve put the skids under the administrative resource.” But the latter claim of the CEC chairman sounds rather dubious.
