State resources being abused in elections, leading observer says

Abuse of state resources, particularly local budget resources,
has returned to the Ukrainian elections process, Olha Aivazovska, the board
chairman of the Opora election-observing organization, said in an interview
published on the ib.ua news site on March 21, ten days ahead of Election Day.
“During no elections have we seen such a scale of programs in which citizens
receive cash as compensation for the difference in the cost of utilities,” she
said, referring to state subsidies being distributed. These payments “can
influence the voting results as a whole,” she said, also citing the one-time
pension payments being made in March.

Despite the Internal Affairs Ministry alleging
vote-buying schemes organized by the Poroshenko administration (and Poroshenko
campaigners accusing the Tymoshenko campaign of the same), Opora monitors have
not fixated a single case of money being exchanged for a vote as of
end-February, Aivazovska said. At the same time, the Central Election
Commission created an enormous legal loophole when allowing election funds to
compensate campaign workers for their expenses. Moreover, an unlimited number
of campaign workers can receive salaries. “It’s necessary to separate payments
for the services of campaign workers from giving money to voters with the goal
of gaining their vote,” she said. Aivazovska declined to offer any overall
evaluation of the elections process so far.

Among the most egregious election violations reported
in the last week was the report on March 23 by Prosecutor General Yuriy
Lutsenko that investigators uncovered a vote-buying network organized in the
Odesa region by the campaign of Yulia Tymoshenko. Besides providing a blurred
photograph of the campaign worker alleged to be involved, Lutsenko posted on
his Facebook page photos of the cash discovered, which he said amounted to EUR
6,000, USD 16,000 and UAH 800,000. In response to the accusation, the
Tymoshenko campaign accused Lutsenko of engaging in an elections provocation to
discredit the Tymoshenko campaign. “The fact of a large sum of money
confiscated occurred at a branch of Privatbank, which is a state bank and has
no relation to the Fatherland party offices,” said a statement released within
hours of Lutsenko’s post by Tymoshenko’s Fatherland party.

Zenon Zawada: We have
repeatedly referred to the Poroshenko administration as engaging in soft vote
manipulations to influence the outcome of the vote, and these are prime
examples that have been cited by Aivazovska, who is Ukraine’s leading
independent authority on the elections. With the methods she described, Poroshenko’s
strategy is to influence the results (through the abuse of state resources)
without having to rely on egregious violations on Election Day itself. With
these methods meeting the standards of the law, election observers will have no
choice but to say that the vote occurred freely and fairly.

It remains to be seen whether the most important
election-observing mission, the OSCE, will be willing to endorse these
elections as meeting international standards if most of the vote manipulations
occurred before Election Day. It’s also unclear whether it will endorse the
vote if these manipulations were legalized, whether occurring in the form of
state social payments or payments from election funds. Without egregious
violations on Election Day itself, and without consistent violation of the law
in the months leading up to Election Day, we believe election observers, led by
the OSCE, are likely to endorse the vote. That’s particularly the case when
they are well aware that withholding an endorsement could unleash political
chaos in Ukraine.