KHERSON-- Andriy Malchenko, 31, who runs a small business in the city of Kherson, says he has no plan to vote in the upcoming election. “There’s no choice,” Malchenko explains.
Many people
around him feel they are in the same position, and think that vote or not, the
Party of Regions will win. This rural region in southern part of Ukraine has
the highest rate of people who are not willing to vote. Some 16 percent will
stay at home, according to a Kyiv International Institute of Sociology study.
This is 4 percent more than the national average.
Southern
Ukraine, which also includes Mykolayiv,
Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts as well as the Crimean
peninsula, are a part of the traditional “white-and-blue belt,” which are the colors of the Party of Regions.
But unlike at the Regions’ Donbas home base, here people feel like they have no
alternative options.
“In Crimea
there is big support for communists, while in Mykolayiv and Kherson oblasts we
see growing support of Vitali Klitschko,” says Oleksandr Chernenko, head of the
Committee of Voters of Ukraine think tank.
Klitschko’s
Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reforms Party, which has benefited strongly
across the nation from positioning itself as a true new alternative to both the
ruling party and the opposition, has 11.5 percent of potential voters in
southern Ukraine. Almost 15 percent will vote for the Communists, according to
a recent poll by Democratic Initiatives Foundation.
Chernenko
says south of the country is desperate for a new force to support. Natalia
Korolevska’s Ukraine-Forward Party has the highest support in this region – 2.4
percent, according to DIF
poll.
People in
southern Ukraine also have the highest number of voters – about 5 percent – who
say they would like to support a force that is not on the list.
“People say
‘What for do we need these elections for?’ They will not bring any changes,’”
said Anatoliy Chubachenko, expert of Mykolayiv-based Center of Analytical
Researchers.
Despite
having marginal presence in the region, the opposition Batkivshchyna Party
still has support here –around 5 to 7 percent. That’s twice the support it has
in the east and less than half its national average. Chubachenko says local
representatives of Batkivshchyna often complain they have no access to the
local media. But in fact, he believes, they aren’t trying hard enough.
Radion
Banar, regional representative of OPORA elections watchdog, said it looks like
the opposition “once again surrendered the southern region.”
“With the
number of violations in favor of Party of Regions they (the opposition) would
have to live in the courts, appeal to international observers, but instead they
look toothless,” Banar said.
Observers
here say the scale of voter bribery is massive, and so is the so-called
administrative resource, or use of office and government resources for the
election campaign.
Food
packages given our on behalf of Party of Regions by lawmaker Volodymyr
Nakonechniy in Mykolayiv surprised nobody. He even blogged about it, but the
violation is so common that it went almost unnoticed.
But some
Party of Regions officials have managed to amaze. Banar told of the case of use of budget money
for the election campaign in the same style as was done by the pro-government
United Russia Party.
The Regions’
faction on the Odesa Oblast council proposed to allocate Hr 535 million from
the budget to finance 50 priority objects, allegedly suggested by their voters.
The initiative was called the “people’s
budget”, and the numerous upgrades of infrastructural objects in the city,
ranging from children’s play parks to
benches, were then presented as the work
of Party of Regions.
“They
allocate budget money and then they say that within the people’s budget Party
of Regions has built a swing in this yard,” Banar explained. “This is an
administrative resource in very large scale with the special curators in all
the districts.” Similar cases have been registered by observers in Dnipropetrovsk
Oblast.
But despite
the per-election spending spree, voters here remain frustrated about the future
parliament, feeling that once again there is nobody to represent them.
“The
disappointment in the city in very high, but people will vote for the Regions,”
said Serhiy Repkov, a 31-year-old programmer in Sevastopol. “Is there anybody
else to vote for?”
Hot races in southern Ukraine
With the
relatively low support of opposition in the south, the hot races in the south
are were pro-government candidates are fighting each other.
Veteran
Communist lawmaker Kateryna Samoilyk for more than a decade assumed that
district 186 in Kherson Oblast was her stronghold. She was very disappointed when
Party of Regions-nominated Oleksiy Zhuravko, a person mostly famous for his
aggressive behavior in parliament, as her rival.
The fight
is fierce in Mykolayiv’s district 127, where three deputies from the
parliamentary majority are competing against each other. They are Volodymyr
Nakonechny of the Party of Regions, Volodymyr Matveyev of the Communist Party
and Hennadiy Zadyrko, who came to parliament on ex-Prime Minister Yulia
Tymoshenko’s ticket, but switched sides once she lost power.
The stakes
are high in district 74 in Zaporizhyia Oblast, where Communist lawmaker Oleksiy
Baburin competes with Yaroslav Sukhiy, his fellow coalition member from the
Party of Regions.
Odesa Oblast
has a number of well-known former journalists running here. The best known is
Olga Gerasymyuk, now a candidate of UDAR party in district 139, whose main
rival is a Communist lawmaker Yevhen Tsarkov. Another journalist turned
candidate, Kostiantyn Usov, has an even greater challenge in district 134,
competing with veteran lawmaker Sergiy Grynevetsky of People’s Party.
The
residents of district 6 in Feodosiya were lucky to receive Hr 24 million of
state budget money for the city thanks to the lobbying effort of Yulia
Lyovochkina, sister of the presidential chief of staff Serhiy Lyovochkin. A
native of Kyiv, she is running for parliament in Crimea. Observers say
Lyovochkina, an incumbent from the Party of Regions, has a pretty good chance
to get into parliament again. “According to our sources, [head of Crimean
government Anatoly] Mohyliov is personally responsible for Lyovochkina’s
victory,” said Rinat Umerov, OPORA’s coordinator on the Crimean peninsula.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be
reached at [email protected]
