You're reading: Europe: Ukrainians deserved better from Oct. 28 election

Europe highlights influence of big money in Oct. 28 election.Ukraine’s streak of four relatively democratic national elections, from 2004 to 2012, came to an end with the Oct. 28 parliamentary vote.

The 56-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which fields the largest and most credible election observation missions, said in an Oct. 29 preliminary statement that the vote represented an apparent reversal in Ukraine’s democratic progress.

The assessment is strengthened because it was supported by other international European institutions, including the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the European Parliament and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.

They found that the election included several flaws:

a tilted playing field;

abuse of administrative (official) resources;

lack of transparency in the campaign, the workings of the Central Election Commission, party financing and vote tabulation;

lack of balanced media coverage;

detrimental influence of powerful groups, leading to a lack of diversity in media ownership and pluralism, as well as a lack of transparency in campaign and party financing;

lack of representation on election commissions from some political parties competing in the vote, while the ruling pro-presidential Party of Regions had strong representation; and
lack of effective sanctions for serious violations of law.

“Considering the abuse of power, and the excessive role of money in this election, democratic progress appears to have reversed in Ukraine,” said Walburga Habsburg Douglas, the special coordinator who led the OSCE short-term election observation mission and the head of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly delegation. “One should not have to visit a prison to hear from leading political figures in the country.”

Douglas’ prison reference was to imprisoned ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and ex-Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko, who were barred from running because of criminal convictions seen in the West as politically motivated. Despite her imprisonment, Tymoshenko’s Batkivshyna Party finished second in the election, with more than 25 percent of votes and another 42 seats in the single-mandate races, giving the party roughly 104 seats.

“Ukrainians deserved better from these elections. The ‘oligarchization’ of the whole process meant that citizens lost their ownership of the election, as well as their trust in it,” said Andreas Gross, the head of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) delegation.

Oligarchs and money were indeed key players in this election. Poland’s Dziennik Gazeta Prawna said in a recent report that Ukraine spent more money on the election than Poland, Germany and Czech Republic combined – an estimated $225 million. The next highest was Germany, spending $80 million.
The list of new deputies shows that many of them can certainly afford it.

The new Verkhovna Rada boasts a few billionaires and a couple dozen multi-millionaires whose combined wealth is close to $8 billion. The nation’s richest man and long-time financier of the Party of Regions, Rinat Akhmetov, chose not to run for the Rada this time.

So the title of the richest man in the new parliament goes to the young billionaire Kostyantyn  Zhevago, 38, whose wealth is $2.2 billion, according to the 2012 Focus magazine rating. A former Tymoshenko backer, Zhevago owns Ferrexpo, the first ever Ukrainian London-listed company and Finance and Credit Bank.

Economy Minister Petro Poroshenko, the confectionery king of Ukraine with a wealth estimated at almost $1 billion, also got into parliament through a district race in his home city of Vinnytsia.
The Party of Regions traditionally has a fair share of oligarchs and moguls. Government members Serhiy Tigipko, Borys Kolesnikov and Andriy Klyuyev are all multi-millionaires who have made it into parliament.

Member of the European Parliament Rebecca Harms recently said that Ukraine has so many rich people in parliament that’s it’s “difficult to find ordinary citizens here.” She recommended change.

This is not the only recommendation international observers made for Ukraine in the election, and more will be coming in the final report by OSCE, which will come later this year.

Many observers noted that major improvements are needed in the election legislation. We have systemic problems,” said Gross, head of the PACE delegation. “To make a new election with the same rules, you get the same result.”

Audrey Glover, the head of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights long-term election observation mission, said government authorities failed to respond to campaign violations properly.

“The lack of appropriate responses by the authorities to the various electoral violations has led to a climate of impunity.” Glover said. “This has cast a shadow over the election and the democratic progress that, until recently, Ukraine had been making.”

The news media environment, in particular, came under sharp scrutiny, according to the OSCE/ODIHR preliminary findings.

“The media environment is characterized by a virtual absence of editorial autonomy on television,” according to OSCE/ODIHR. “The politicization of TV by businesspeople and the dependence of state-owned broadcasters on the state budget significantly limit political pluralism, in favor of the ruling powers. The direct access of media owners and political actors to news content, the latter through ‘envelope payments’ to journalists, hinders investigative journalism and ultimately undermines the media’s crucial role as the watchdog for political power.”

Kyiv Post chief editor Brian Bonner can be reached at [email protected] and Kyiv Post editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be reached at [email protected].