Most ever Ukrainian NGOs to observe elections, CEC says

This year’s presidential elections will be observed by
139 Ukrainian non-governmental organizations, the largest in history, said on
March 18 Nataliya Bernatska, a member of the Central Election Commission. “We
were very strict at the CEC in reviewing documents,” she told a broadcast on
the hromadske.ua news site. “For us, the key criteria were the true existence
of this organization, and election observing obligatorily being in the statute
as among the organization’s activities.” In addition, about 1,000 international
observers have been registered, she said. Recall, the first round of the
presidential vote is scheduled for March 31 and the second round is scheduled
for Apr. 21.

The elections won’t be monitored by video, which is
not required by law and has proven to be ineffective in exposing violations,
Yevhen Radchenko, the CEC deputy head, told a March 15 press conference. Nearly
UAH 1 bln were spent on a video-monitoring system involving 32,000 apparatus in
a past election, he said. Only 180,000 times was the video reviewed nationally,
or 7.5 times per polling station on average, he said. “Its effectiveness speaks
for itself,” he said. At the same time, state bodies will have the right to set
up video-monitoring at polling stations, but strictly for security concerns and
not recording the vote process.

Zenon Zawada:
Video-recording of elections is effective if it’s actively used by
commissioners and others involved in the vote process. Meanwhile, the enhanced
presence of observers can also be positive if they play a constructive, neutral
role. It would be worth reviewing what types of organizations will be involved
and whether they have political affiliations. Any vote manipulations in these elections
will reflect the overall higher level of political sophistication of the
Poroshenko administration. That implies that a bulk of the manipulations will
have occurred before the vote even occurs.

Internal Affairs Minister Arsen Avakov has already said he has evidence
of the Poroshenko campaign organizing vote-buying schemes. He is widely
believed to have a tacit political alliance with contender Yulia Tymoshenko,
who has also accused Poroshenko of vote-buying (whose allies, in response, have
accused her campaign of vote-buying.) Candidate Anatoliy Grytsenko has also
accused the president of numerous vote manipulation schemes, including
vote-buying.

A latent fraud threat in these elections is the large
presence of so-called “dead spirits,” or the names on voter registers of those
who are dead, living or working abroad. These “dead spirits” have swelled by
the millions since the 2014 presidential vote. This should have reduced the number
of voters significantly on the official registers, but instead the CEC has
reported a decrease of only 80,000 voters, which is cause for concern.
(Tymoshenko claims the registers have been inflated by a million voters sicne
2014 but didn’t indicate details.)

The main arbiter in these elections will be the
OSCE election observing mission, which consists of 80 long-term and 750
short-term observers. Its leaders will have enormous influence in not only
establishing the results, but setting the overall climate of political
stability in the country.