Fatherland party complains about election-related persecution

Ukraine’s leading political force, the pro-EU,
populist Fatherland party, has submitted complaints to the Ukrainian
parliamentary head about alleged political persecution of its candidates in local
elections, as well as local election commissions, the pravda.com.ua news site
reported on Apr. 16. In the Kharkiv region, a district administration head
demanded that Fatherland candidates withdraw from local elections, the
complaint alleged. In the Chernivtsi region, officials with the district
regional administration allegedly threatened to dismiss a school director if a
Fatherland candidate was allowed to meet with citizens on its territory.

Meanwhile, a district council head in the Odesa region
allegedly gave instructions to election commission candidates to engage in
fraud on behalf of the president and his party, the complaint alleged. When
most of them declined, he recruited candidates without the necessary
qualifications.

Zenon Zawada: Unfortunately,
this is only the beginning of what is likely to be a highly contested election
campaign season mired with widespread accusations of fraud, particularly by the
Fatherland party against the Poroshenko administration. The president seems to
have an understanding that Tymoshenko and her party have a wide enough lead in
the polls currently that tactics of election fraud won’t convince the public of
his victory in either the presidential or parliamentary elections (scheduled
for March and October 2019, respectively). Nonetheless, that hasn’t stopped him
from using his access to state resources ( known as “adminresurs”) to make
campaigning as difficult as possible for his leading rival.

If Tymoshenko maintains
her impressive lead in the presidential polls, and if her Fatherland party
keeps its impressive lead in the parliamentary polls, such alleged persecution
tactics won’t make a difference when the elections roll around. Instead
Poroshenko’s main task should be to reduce the gap in the polls to make his
victory in these elections seem plausible to the public. If he fails to do
this, and if he insists on claiming victory despite wide gaps in polls, he
risks sparking wide public protests. Nonetheless, we view this as possible
considering that Poroshenko and the Ukrainian establishment utterly dread a
Tymoshenko presidency.