Local elections rarely arouse international interest. But in Ukraine this weekend, the Oct. 31 vote warrants close scrutiny as there is mounting evidence to suggest that they will be neither free nor fair. For Europe this situation is dangerous.
A falsified ballot will not only complete Ukraine’s slide into authoritarianism but, once the election is stolen, Europe will awake to a dictatorship on its doorstep, one with its hands on the taps through which natural gas flows to millions of European Union households. Grains supplies, too, in this time of rising food prices will also be imperiled, as the Viktor Yanukovych regime’s recent embargo demonstrates.
Europe’s largest political group, the European People’s Party and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, have already expressed alarm at state interference in the election process. Their worries are justified.
Candidates from the Batkivshchyna (Motherland) party, of which I am the leader, have been refused registration in a number of Ukraine’s electoral territories, including Kyiv, Lviv, and Ternopil. In these places the authorities recognized bogus party branches, complete with fake candidates, who will run for election in the party’s name.
The composition of the central and territorial election commissions – the bodies that oversee vote counting and verification – is biased in favor of President Viktor Yanukovych’s ruling Party of Regions, while we see relaxed rules on home voting, a trick employed in the fraudulent presidential election of 2004.
Reports of election law violations from around the country range from threats and dismissals of opposition activists who are state employees, to offering cash bribes to students to vote for candidates loyal to the government. Just last week we found evidence that thousands of ballot papers had been printed illegally in Kharkiv. A similar situation happened this week in Ivano-Frankivsk. Had these infringements occurred in a democratic Western nation, the government would have been forced to resign.
Fair elections along with media freedoms are the two most tangible gains that arose from the mass protests by millions of Ukrainians in the winter of 2004, in what became known as the Orange Revolution. In the following five years, President Viktor Yushchenko presided over a somewhat chaotic and fractious administration, but to his credit he never intervened in elections and upheld media freedoms.
Today both democratic gains are under threat. Harrowing reports of journalists being beaten and disappearing evoke a sense of deja-vu of authoritarian times we thought had passed.
The authorities’ grip on the media is strong. Several TV stations perceived as a threat have had their broadcast licenses revoked, while all but the bravest editors have complied with unwritten rules not to offer airtime to the opposition and not to cover anti-government rallies.
Unusually, the head of the secret police is now the country’s dominant media baron and – at the same time – a member of the Higher Council of Justice.
Thankfully, this assault on media freedom has not gone unnoticed by the international community. Both the United States and EU have voiced concern, while last week the Paris-based watchdog Reporters Without Borders downgraded Ukraine by 42 places to 131st in its annual Press Freedom Index.
Members of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s security service prevent journalist Serhiy Andrushko from covering a June 15 event in Kyiv. Interference with peaceful protests and the work of journalists has become a serious problem under Yanukovych’s administration (UNIAN)
Elsewhere, democratic freedoms are being rolled back in a systematic fashion. The Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, is being used to harass opponents of the regime. Journalists, civil rights activities, domestic and even foreign NGOs have all come under its watchful eye. In June, the head of the Ukraine office of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation had to resort to direct intervention from German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office to avoid being expelled from the country on “national security” grounds.
The right to freedom of assembly is being curtailed. Peaceful rallies are heavily guarded by camouflaged units and bus companies in the provinces are threatened with having their operating licenses revoked if they transport protesters to regional cities or to the capital.
The opposition and my party in particular have borne the brunt of politically motivated smear and intimidation campaigns. Half a dozen former senior officials from my government have been arrested and are under investigation. Some have languished in detention since the summer.
No slide into authoritarianism can be achieved without bending constitutional rules and seizing control of the country’s judicial system. Nowhere was this more evident than the Oct. 1 Constitutional Court ruling that invested more power in the president by declaring constitutional amendments made during the Orange Revolution as “unconstitutional.”
Another glaring instance came in April when Yanukovych negotiated reduced gas prices from Moscow in return for extending the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s lease on its naval base in Sevastopol. This deal ignored the Constitution, which forbids foreign military bases on Ukrainian territory.
Understandably, Russia is merely pursuing its national interests; however the Ukrainian government’s willingness to merge major industries and national energy assets with Russian holdings are at best myopic and at worst puts Ukraine’s sovereignty at risk.
The threat of authoritarianism to Ukraine is real and it is against this backdrop that policy makers across Europe and in the U.S. should scrutinize the fairness of the Oct. 31 elections. The consequences of a new authoritarian regime on Europe’s borders with enhanced potential for corruption and criminality should give cause for alarm; for history has proven that authoritarian regimes neither endure nor are they inherently stable.
Europe has due cause for concern given that 80 percent of its Russian natural gas imports are pumped via Ukraine, which is also one of the world’s largest grain exporters and the fifth most populous country in Europe – a country negotiating with the EU an Association Agreement and visa free travel for its citizens.
A populous remaining poor and powerless, a system of governance corrupt and inefficient, opposition and the media harassed and a civil society subdued, is this the kind of “stability” Europe wants on its eastern border?
We trust not and appeal to the international community to be vigilant in safeguarding the European values we hold so strongly. We have had one election officially recognized as stolen. All the signs indicate we will have another. The time has come to stand up for democracy.
Yulia Tymoshenko is a leading opposition figure in Ukraine and two-time former prime minister
