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A car belonging to a political activist backing Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko blocked 10 trucks carrying election ballots at a local printing house. Police were called in to settle the conflict. UNIAN Two weeks after the Ternopil Oblast council election, their results are still disputed.

In frequency, scandals and world attention, Ukraine’s elections emulate the Olympic Games. Mired in boycotts, bribery and disputes over results, both are often unpredictable, but dynamic.

Both events are programmed to happen infrequently, with controversial qualifying rounds in between. As such, the regional vote on March 15 for council seats in Ternopil Oblast in western Ukraine was seen as a bellwether.

One overriding issue is whether the nation has – once and for all – relegated electoral fraud to the Leonid Kuchma-era past as it approaches a new presidential election within the year. If it hasn’t, more Orange Revolution-style protests could be in the offing to undo rigged results.

The Ternopil Oblast results, however, offered no clear-cut answer. Taking place below the radar of dispassionate international observers, the losers of the election cried foul, but not too loudly.

The nationalist far-right party Svoboda vaulted to prominence by knocking out the oblast’s previous favorites, a slate of candidates representing the bloc of Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

Svoboda is led nationally by Oleh Tyahnybok, a towering man derided as xenophobic by his critics and a patriotic nationalist by his supporters. In an interview last year with the Kyiv Post, Tyahnybok said that “Ukraine is not just for Ukrainians, but we want to be respected.” Tyahnybok is wary of Russia and pro-NATO, but critical of the European Union.

After Tyahnybok’s Svoboda Party in Ternopil, the United Center party led by President Victor Yushchenko’s chief of staff, Victor Baloha, and the Party of Regions led by ex-Prime Minister Victor Yanukovych, finished strong. Their second- and third-place showings, respectively, were surprising to some, suspicious to others.

Pre-election opinion polls predicted they would not be able to cross the 3 percent threshold required to get seats on the council.

“How can we explain that the United Center ranking below the 3 percent threshold prior to the vote suddenly got in? I understand it as ‘administrative resource,’” said Andriy Shevchenko, a BYuT parliament member. “Administrative resource” is often a euphemism for dirty dealing or government favors for certain candidates.

BYuT finished a distance fourth place with only 12 seats, compared to 54, in the previous election.

The prime minister’s supporters claimed election fraud, but have not presented compelling evidence in support of their case.

They went as far as comparing the ballot to the 2004 Mukachevo mayoral race in Zakarpatska Oblast, a dishonest contest that served as a dress rehearsal for the Orange Revolution during the presidential election later in the year.

"I was in Mukachevo after the rigged election in 2004 because of the many alarm bells at that time," said Hanna Severinsen, a Danish citizen and former member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. "But this time, no alarm bells have been heard."

Others believe that BYuT suffered an honest and natural defeat after calling on voters to boycott. An independent election watchdog, the Committee of Voters of Ukraine (CVU), did not register significant violations. In a public statement, they explained a major power shift in the regional assembly by “disappointment of the voters in the parties in power.”

However, President Victor Yushchenko cast shadows over the fairness of the CVU by appointing its chief Ihor Popov deputy head of his secretariat just days later. Popov, who earned his reputation as an independent political observer, said “it was laughable” to connect his nomination to Ternopil elections.

Others find the coincidence not so amusing.

“First I believed in the Ternopil results,” said Yuriy Yakymenko, a political analyst at the Razumkov political think tank in Kyiv. “But then [Popov’s] appointment made me think twice. However, I don’t think it sets the stage for the next presidential vote. The price at stake is a lot higher, more resources, more control, more public attention and international observers,” Yakymenko added.

He thinks that BYuT should regret its decision to back out of the contest beforehand.

“If they [BYuT] did not give up on a campaign and sent their election observers, they would have had a better result,” Yakymenko said.

The Kyiv regional court satisfied BYuT’s appeal the day after the vote and banned the Ternopil election committee from publicizing final results. But the committee went ahead with the printing anyway, legitimizing the results and tangling the case further as the court order is widely being ignored.

Despite the legal confusion, the regional council opened its first session on March 19.

With little support backing their complaints, BYuT is now talking more about the lessons learned than challenges they will pursue.

“Taking into consideration massive distrust to the court system, I don’t think further legal battles would bring the ultimate answer,” Shevchenko, the BYuT lawmaker, said. Nevertheless, he said that 12 elected deputies were likely to boycott the council session for its entire sitting.

Meanwhile, back in Ternopil, lawmakers got down to business.

The winner, Svoboda, nominated one if its own as head of the new regional legislature. And, weeks after television crews dedicated to the political fight in Ternopil left, the oblast appears to be back to normal for many locals.

So, with no credible revelations of election fraud, the Ternopil Oblast result serves as proof of the rising discontent among voters with incumbents and the strong desire for new faces.

The Svoboda victory in Ternopil did not surprise Andriy Stets, who teaches Christian ethics in Ternopil high school. “People want to see fresh leaders,” Stets said.

Stets voted for Svoboda, which garnered 33 percent of public support in the Oblast. “I think BYuT has already lost its popularity everywhere in Ukraine. People got disappointed as Yulia Tymoshenko promised many nice things but little of that was put to life.”