Progress Evident, Larger Dose of Democracy Needed
The press conference staged on April 1 by international observers seemed to have two meanings — one to be announced officially: “We note the progress achieved by Ukraine, but final conclusions about each body involved in the election process and the role of judges,” said Vice President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly Bruce George. The second meaning was like nothing really serious had happened: “No violations were fixed during the elections that would influence the situation,” said Ambassador Wygant. Yet simultaneously the observers “had an impression that even in the Dominican Republic where voters had to wait for three or four hours, voters were given more attention than in Ukraine,” said Andreas Gross, Vice President of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly. He was especially impressed by absolutely unadapted polling stations, by lines the voters had to stand. Wygant recalled violations of the secret ballot, “inadequate facilities,” off-register tickets [documents entitling people to vote outside the constituencies where they are registered] with which a great number of people voted, and the fact that ballots were cast by those whose names never were on the voters’ lists. However, “We know very well that the road to democracy is long and difficult,” said Andreas Gross.
That same day US State Department spokesman Philip Ricker said that “the United States’ conclusions coincided with the conclusions of the OSCE and its observer mission to Ukraine. We are disappointed by the fact that the Ukrainian government did not act more energetically to ensure equal opportunities for all political parties,” Interfax-Ukraine quoted him as saying. According to the agency’s report, to the question whether Washington would resort to sanctions Ricker replied: “Let’s wait until the final results are announced.” The OSCE conclusions coincided with the USA’s indicated authorities’ interference with the election process, abuse of the administrative resource, and unequal access of candidates to the mass media. Presenting their impressions at a press conference, the OSCE representatives sounded more cautious, but they abstained from answering whether the elections were fair and democratic. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry reacted to the US State Department spokesman’s words with Foreign Ministry spokesman Ihor Dolhov saying at a briefing that Kyiv “took the statement calmly” as “a working element.”
Dolhov reminded those present, however, that in international practice “any official comments are normally withheld until final returns of elections are announced.” In addition, like many other critics of American freedoms, Mr. Dolhov stated: “Unfortunately, shortcomings during elections can be found not only in the Ukrainian democracy. I wouldn’t like to refer to the elections in that country (the USA), but things didn’t go all that smoothly there.” It should be admitted that so far representatives of the US diplomacy have been quite unemotional commenting on election problems, because the incident with the latest presidential elections in the USA is still fresh in memory.
The Foreign Ministry also said something about the Ukrainian citizens who voted abroad. 24,138 people exercised this right — 50.1% out of the total number of eligible Ukrainian voters abroad. The figure concerns, though, only those who are abroad on legal terms and are registered with consulates. 90 polling stations opened on election day, and the last to close were those located in North and South America (due to the time difference). Also, the Ukrainian peacemakers who are now in Kosovo, Sierra-Leone and South Lebanon had an opportunity to vote. The Foreign Ministry stressed that there was not a single diplomat among the members of election commissions abroad. According to preliminary data based on less than a half the ballots counted, most of the votes given by Ukrainian citizens abroad were in favor of For a United Ukraine and the Communist Party.
“The priorities of Ukraine’s foreign policy remain unchanged,” Dolhov stressed, commenting on the outcome of the elections. The Foreign Ministry also drew attention to the political forces which “were supported by the Ukrainian people.” According to spokesman Dolhov, they “stand for development of European integration, democratic transformations and market reforms in Ukraine” (this must especially concern the Communists).
Meanwhile, Leonid Kuchma was reported to have directed the Foreign Ministry to work out new conceptual principles to govern Ukraine’s foreign policy. According to Dolhov, corrections will be made “in the part of our foreign political activities which is oriented at overcoming global threats,” those the world faced on black Tuesday last year. It should be understood that the corrections will be made in the Concept of the Foreign Policy ten years ago: too much has been said about the necessity to update it (and its numerous flaws were noticeable long before September 11, 2001). There is little doubt that a new concept will not pass the new parliament easily. For various reasons. No one is saying when it will be ready.
As The Day was told at the OSCE Mission office on April 3, additional study of the elections in Ukraine has been necessitated by complaints about violations on election day. For the next “several days or weeks,” two more observers will be working in Ukraine. When The Day asked how often the OSCE sends additional post-election missions, the answer was: “This has been done before,” but no examples were given. The Central Election Committee said it had never heard of additional missions and appraised the work of OSCE observers after the elections as an absolutely normal practice, nothing out of the ordinary. Head of the CEC Foreign Relations Department Svitlana Kravtsova told The Day that the observers who have “a long-term observer mandate” can stay in Ukraine after the elections. The term extends to the date of announcement of the final results (in Ukraine fifteen days after the elections). On Tuesday, an OSCE Mission observer was introduced to the CEC. He will attend all its meetings where various complaints will be considered.
There is nothing alarming about the observers’ decision to work longer. The experience of Ukraine (and not only Ukraine) has shown that OSCE missions’ reports are very seldom categorical. It is almost certain that the election returns are acknowledged and violations pointed out. Kyiv might heed the observers. Or it might be just as happy that the OSCE has called this election “more progressive” than the 1998 one, especially since Ukrainian realities should have convinced everyone that a repetition of the Yugoslavia scenario is impossible.
COMMENTARY
Serhiy TOLSTOV, Director of the Institute of Political Analysis and International Research:
“The statements by Western observers, experts, and politicians are pr ompted primarily by a desire to make Ukraine comply with democratic standards. As far as the latter are concerned, I should note that [complaints about] long lines at the polls are nonsensical and about the poor level of preparation of election commissions and observers just as much nonsense. At the same time, most of the statements concerned the situation during the election campaign. It’s difficult for me to talk of complaints about the bias of the press, because I know from my own experience that the press is never unbiased. I think the point where the observers are right is their criticism of the imperfect election legislation. They said, in particular, that the Law On Elections allowed a 10% surplus of ballots available at polling stations to the target voter turnout. This norm is truly strange and really opens loopholes for breaches. But unlike previous elections, when the supervision over election commissions ended when they started counting ballots, this was the first election when the loopholes were narrowed as much as possible. What makes me wonder is why Western observers took the 1994 or 1998 elections calmly, while opportunities for falsification were first minimized in 2002. Another matter is the unsolved problem of control over elections to bodies of local self-government. This time it was the election to Parliament that was given prime attention, but local elections still remain a problem.
And as for the compatibility of these elections with democratic standards, on the whole, procedurally, they were more compatible than the previous ones. And politically — any interpretation in this context is always subjective.
Oleksandr SUSHKO, Director of the Center of Peace, Conversion, and Foreign Policy:
“It must be clearly understood: the thesis that Western politicians are more inclined to support the opposition than other political forces is secondary in this case, because Western observers were primarily interested in the election process per se. I haven’t heard any prejudiced comment on the pre-election process or the course of the voting. Most of the assessments were diplomatic, even too diplomatic, because we were all watching this campaign, and all of the major irregularities reported by observers after the elections had been reported by the Ukrainian Voters Committee even earlier, and we all saw lines at the polls. Yes, this election campaign did meet some minimal requirements, but a country that really means to enter the European Union still has a long way to go to European standards. Because unlike, say, Zimbabwe, Ukraine assumed obligations to abide by democratic norms. By signing the relevant documents with the Council of Europe, Ukraine declared that the values accepted by the Council of Europe also became its own. And all those rhetorical statements that certain values and standards are imposed on us look arch, because under the documents, the CE and OSCE standards are our national standards as well.
Some commentaries in the Western press are strange indeed. They put to much emphasis on a political schism of Ukraine. As if their authors had discovered something entirely new! What we see here is a play on conventional stereotypes of Ukraine’s image. But the innovations that were revealed by the voting in its western regions were overlooked. For example, they overlooked the fact that the returns were very different in neighboring regions, which revealed new division lines. Another theme is the Belarusization of Ukraine. The elections have shown that there are no grounds to talk about it. After all, the Belarusian system is an authoritarian nonparty system, and our parties’ tenacity, our voters’ desire to support sustainable political parties, their clear orientation at leaders and ideologies testify to the vitality of the party system in this country. But we have to take into account the heterogeneity of regions. In several regions certain political regimes exist. The most exemplary and dangerous of them is the Donetsk regime which is an alliance with a political party, authorities, capital, and which practically monopolizes all channels of influence on society. There we can see a certain one-party trend: this alliance has subdued all competitors. On the national scale, this bloc [For a United Ukraine] is an alliance built on a vertical line of command. And in Donetsk oblast the bloc is an integral power structure which is close to the old Communist Party of the Soviet Union as a sole ruling party, and all other parties exist only nominally. Thus, there is a regional political regime founded on authoritarianism, total control, and elimination of independent mass media. We can see some alarming signals of Belarusization in several regions. What’s important is how official Kyiv is inclined to encourage such regimes. After the elections it will become more or less clear. For the ultimate goal of the Donetsk clan is to get their man elected president. The system worked out in Donetsk promotes Belarusization. Most Western analysts noted obvious things that anyone was able to see long before. But it’s not accidental at all that in Donetsk oblast one of the blocs collected 40% of the votes, while in neighboring Luhansk, where voters have the same sentiments, it collected two or even three times less.
