Odesa university rector suspended for election violations

Ukraine’s Education Ministry announced on Oct. 3 that it has suspended the rector of the Odesa Legal Academy, Volodymyr Zavalniuk, for campaigning on behalf of its founder, Serhiy Kivalov. The ministry received numerous appeals from students about being pressures and being forced to engage in campaigning, the ministry said, as reported by the Ukrinform news agency. Zavalniuk is suspended until Oct. 28, the report said. Kivalov is campaigning for a single-mandate district in the Oct. 26 early parliamentary election.

Ukraine’s Interior Ministry has filed criminal charges for vote-buying in Kharkiv election district, reported on Oct. 4 ministry spokesman Anton Gerashchenko. He pointed out that the alleged crime occurred in the single-mandate district where among the competitors is Dmytro Dobkin, the brother of the former Kharkiv state oblast administration head, who was aligned with the Yanukovych administration. Dobkin’s role in the crime is being investigated, he said.

Ihor Yeremeyev, among the biggest oligarchs in western Ukraine, offered gifts and financial aid to the residents of a Volyn region village during an Oct. 2 election campaign event, reported on Oct. 3 Opora, Ukraine’s leading election monitoring organization. Yemereyev is competing for a single-mandate seat in the Oct. 26 early parliamentary election. During the campaign event, Yeremeyev’s aides distributed envelopes with cash as well as certificates redeemable from a charity launched by Yeremeyev himself, Opora reported, citing both activities in violation of election rules. For example, one certificate worth $1,500 was to pay for 14 new windows in a local nursery, redeemable with Yeremeyev’s charity.

Felix Olshevskiy, a single-mandate candidate in the Mykolayiv region, has been giving its residents tea service sets, bottled water and home appliances, a local journalist reported on Oct. 4. His campaign literature mentions where he offered the gifts, to whom and how much.

Zenon Zawada: The election campaign is in full swing in Ukraine and we can expect the standard violations. Vote-buying will be particularly widespread in these harsh economic times for Ukrainians. However, the violations during the campaign and the vote itself shouldn’t be large enough to throw the results into question.

The suspension of a university rector is a refreshingly unprecedented step for the education ministry and a sign of progress in Ukrainian democracy. Yet the criminal charges related to Dobkin are cause for concern since he’s part of the pro-Russian opposition. We’d want to see similar criminal charges against candidates in the pro-Western camp. On the whole, we expect these elections will be determined free and fair by international observers.