Ukraine presidential poll heads for run-off amid opposition claims of fraud by PM

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=578430
By Askold Krushelnycky in Kiev
02 November 2004

The Ukranian government has been criticised for serious flaws in the first round of the country's presidential election. The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe and other international observers said dubious practices started months before the polling began.
Yesterday the government's pro-Russian candidate, the Prime Minister Viktor Yanuko-vych, and his pro-Western rival, Viktor Yushchenko, were neck and neck. Incomplete official results gave each about 40 per cent of the vote.

With only 6 per cent of the vote to count, neither candidate had a chance of topping the 50 per cent mark needed to win in the first round and they will face each other in a run-off on 21 November.

The OSCE sent 600 observers and they were joined by scores of others from the Council of Europe, the European Parliament, the Nato Parliamentary Assembly and US and Canadian monitors.

The observers said the biggest infringements of international elections standards came months before the ballot when the government blocked the opposition candidate's access to mass media, and used state apparatus to disrupt Mr Yushchenko's campaign. The observers also criticised the Ukrainian central election commission's handling of complaints. Many opposition supporters found they were not on the electoral roll.

Bruce George, the leader of the OSCE observers, said it was a step backwards from Ukraine's parliamentary polls in 2002. He said: "With a heavy heart, we have to conclude that this election did not meet a considerable number of OSCE, Council of Europe, and other European standards for democratic elections.

"We found overwhelming bias in favour of the incumbent Prime Minister in the state media and interference in his favour by the state administration. Mr Yanukovych's campaign failed to make a clear separation between resources owned or managed by the incumbent political forces and the property of the state."

The opposition Our Ukraine coalition, led by Mr Yushchenko, claims that aside from obstructions and dirty tricks, the government mounted massive fraud at many of the 33,000 polling stations. It says ballot boxes were stuffed and genuine official tallies for voting were switched after intimidation or bribery of local officials. In at least one instance, men who burst into a polling station where the vote favoured Mr Yushchenko and fired guns before stealing the ballots. Yesterday Our Ukraine lodged more than 70 formal complaints about gross election abuses.

Anonymous independent exit polls showed Mr Yushchenko far ahead of Mr Yanukovych. Volodymyr Polokhalo, a Ukrainian political observer, said: "Sunday's election showed Ukrainians knew what was going on and diminished the effect of government to obstruct the opposition's campaign and to falsify voting.

"It's obvious to most Ukrainians that Yushchenko beat Yanukovych and probably would have won outright. Yanukovych has used up most of his potential to distort the results and heads into the next round with a lot of disadvantages."

Yesterday the central election committee abruptly suspended completion of the vote count, without explanation.

Mr Yushchenko's campaign manager, Oleksandr Zinchenko, said he believed the election commission had suspended its work because the trend showed that the opposition candidate would come out ahead of the Prime Minister even and the head of the government did not dare to make that public.

A member of Mr Yanukovych's communications' team, who did not want to be named, said: "There's shock among Yanukovych's team. The real results show Yushchenko probably got more than 54 per cent."

The campaign was marred by bomb explosions and violence. Hundreds of opposition supporters mounted a demonstration in Kiev yesterday.