Hazards of running for parliament

Running for parliament in Ukraine, one has to be ready for battle, often literally. Each campaign day the news bulletins contain what is best described as street crime reports:

— Criminal case opened in Ternopil oblast after an assault on Our Ukraine’s candidate Ihor Sobol. The victim is hospitalized, diagnosed with brain concussion, cut forehead, hematomas;

— In Smolyhiv, a village in Lutsk raion, Volyn oblast, unidentified persons torched the car and real estate of Bohdan Prus, the campaign agent of Borys Zahreva, candidate MP at Electoral District No. 20. The victim insists it was an act of arson and that it was in retaliation for his being the candidate’s agent;

— Viktor Kolishchak, self-promoted candidate MP at Electoral District No. 188 (Khmelnytsky oblast), reports an attempt on his and his family’s life; that an explosive charge was twice brought by a cabby, the first time in the evening on August 31, disguised as an investment project; the second time it was delivered to Kolishchak’s wife’s office during The Day, on September 1, disguised as a present for him.

— Serhii Zlobin, chief of staff, district campaign HQ of the Party UDAR (Electoral District No. 105), was searched and arrested by the Donetsk Organized Crime Bureau, allegedly as part of criminal prosecution in the case of his relative. The opposition believes that the arrest was meant to exert undue influence on UDAR and the opposition as a whole.

Countless other examples could be cited, apart from daily “banal” wrongdoings like using the administrative resource, bribing the electorate, interfering with canvassing, bullying, applying “black PR,” you name it.

During the campaign candidate MPs as well as representatives of the public sector suffer. Not so long ago, Petro Lytvyn, the Ukrainian speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn’s brother, prevented activists of the Vidsich (Rebuff) civic movement from spreading condemning leaflets in Novohrad-Volynsky (Zhytomyr oblast). The leaflets explained why one shouldn’t vote for candidate MP Lytvyn (as one of those who supported Kivalov and Kolesnichenko’s [pro-Russian] bill on languages) and were part of the project “Revenge for the Split of the Country.”

Problems with security are not the “know-how” of the ongoing parliamentary campaign. They were present during all the previous campaigns. The absence of an adequate response from the law enforcement agencies has only served to add to the list of wrongdoings that more often than not had to do with those in power combating the opposition and other “wrong” people. One is strongly reminded of Leonid Kuchma’s 10-year presidency – especially the dirtiest 1999 campaign with an act of terrorism against presidential candidate Natalia Vitrenko in Kryvy Rih – when such practices became widespread and lasting.

At the turn of the 2000s members of the Perspective Ukraine Foundation were often assaulted because their organization actively campaigned against the Kuchma regime. Oleksii Podolsky, a PUF activist involved in the Kuchma case, was assaulted, just like Heorgii Gongadze (who was seized, driven outside Kyiv, and roughed up three months before his murder). PUF leader Serhii Odarych (currently the mayor of Cherkasy) was shot at in 1998. That same year another activist, Serhii Kaunov, was beaten on. The most horrible thing happened in 2000 when Oleksandr Yakymenko was burned alive near his home in Donetsk. I spoke to PUF activist Leonid Safonov (in 1998 he worked at the campaign headquarters of a majoritarian candidate MP in Kyiv). Several attempts were made on his life as a member of the Kyiv City Council.

Safonov: “It happened toward the end of Kuchma’s first term as president. At the time the regime was actively combating our organization. In 1998, while handing out leaflets, I was twice assaulted. The first time was in Troieshchyna [residential district] in Kyiv. I was putting issues of the newspaper My [We] into mailboxes when a man approached and asked me to enter the elevator. I refused and he hit me with his foot. It was a professional blow. Later the militia seemed to have found him and I wanted to prove that the assailant was a bodyguard, not a street mugger. The truth was never established. The second attack came in Kyiv’s Solomianka district. I was hit in the face, probably with a knuckle-duster. Once again the assailant was found but there was no trial. Apparently the assailants were hired pros.”

Under President Viktor Yushchenko the election campaigns passed more or less without ado and the whole world recognized them as democratic ones. Yanukovych’s coming to power in 2010 is the best proof. Yushchenko deserves credit. But then the good old times of Ukraine’s second president started returning. The Constitutional Court reinstated presidential powers as laid down in the 1996 Constitution. Other events took place along the lines of tightening the screws. In the end the local elections in the fall of 2010 were found to have numerous transgressions by international observers. What will be the outcome of this campaign? The 2012 parliamentary elections are a serious test for the current regime, especially against the backdrop of the Tymoshenko case. We are now witness to an increasing number of candidate MPs being threatened with violence.

Oleksandr Yeliashkevych, MP of two convocations, serves as a case study. One of the active and consistent opponents of the Kuchma regime over many years, he had to leave Ukraine in 2002 and became Ukraine’s first statesman to receive political asylum in the US after the White House recognized the threat to him and his family on the part of Kuchma and his retinue. In 2000, an attempt was made on Yeliashkevych’s life and he immediately identified President Kuchma as the mastermind. Despite PACE’s repeated demands for a genuine investigation into this high profile case in Ukraine, nothing has happened to this day.

In his last interview with The Day (No. 19, May 17, 2012), Oleksandr Yeliashkevych did not rule out the possibility of running for parliament. True enough, he has become one of the candidates from the majoritarian electoral district in Obolon (Kyiv). Surprisingly, this experienced politician’s name appears to be unnoticed in this election campaign. There is no canvassing. One can hardly expect a person who has twice won a seat in parliament on a majoritarian basis to overlook this campaign element.

“The reason is doubtlessly the problems relating to security when taking part in the election campaign. I have reason to be seriously concerned about this matter. I cannot take an active part in the campaign until the matter of my personal security has been resolved. I’m trying to solve this problem. I may even shortly address the current political leadership of Ukraine, maybe Alexander Kwasniewski who is a friend of Kuchma’s family, Chairman of the Board of Yalta European Strategy, and who is monitoring the campaign in Ukraine on behalf of the European Parliament,” says Yeliashkevych.

Mykola Melnychenko, the key witness in the Kuchma case, has repeatedly stressed that Yeliashkevych is Kuchma’s worst headache. “God forbid that something should happen to him, but Kuchma’s plan provides for just that,” he said in a statement at the start of the year.

The reputation of the current administration, already dampened in the West, will depend on how democratic these elections will turn out to be. Lack of normal electoral process may result in official Kyiv’s repeated statements about European integration remaining on paper.

“Monitoring the election campaign shows that a majoritarian candidate failing to act as instructed by the ruling party is exposed to various kinds of undue influence, ranging from criminal prosecution to damage to or destruction of property to violence. In the first place, they try to force an unwanted candidate to step down, using ‘mild’ means. If this doesn’t work, they resort to the abovementioned techniques. Regrettably, running for parliament is very dangerous in Ukraine,” human rights activist Yevhen Zakharov told The Day.

Even if the international community recognizes these elections, problems will remain, with the biggest one of the current regime being its determination to fill all seats in parliament with its people, regardless of their professional level and background. In fact, the same is true of the opposition. Unless this situation changes, those in power will continue leading themselves up a blind alley, with chances of finding a way out diminishing with each passing day, and with negative consequences for the whole country.