After numerous reports from different regions in Ukraine – namely, Kharkiv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Khmelnytsk and Odesa – about the discovery of large batches of false ballot-papers, the Batkivshchyna Party launched an enquiry into the process for the production of the documents and whether it complied with effective Ukrainian legislation..

As a result, a scandalous fact was discovered that makes it impossible to talk about legitimate elections being held on Oct. 31. The ballot-papers were printed at 487 printing houses. Only 30 of them confirmed that they had a license to produce limited-issue documents which are, according to Ukraine’s legislation, ballot-papers.

However, the Ministry of Justice confirms that only 4 of the printing paper houses have licenses, which is less that 1% of the total amount of the printing houses producing the ballot papers. Thus, virtually all of the ballot–papers were produced illegally, without sufficient control, and a strict register of their number. It means that they cannot be used for voting.

It is clear, that the gross violations occurring during the printing of the ballot-papers are only an element of the total vote-rigging that is planned by Yanukovych’s regime. In general, the campaign for the election of deputies of local councils, village, town and city mayors, which started with the adoption of the anti-democratic Law on Elections, designed to satisfy the needs of the Party of Regions, will finish with a gross violation of the rights of millions of citizens to choose the representatives of the political force they support.

Today, when the vote is a matter of hours away, the supporters of the largest opposition Party, “Batkivshchyna,” are deprived of the possibility to vote for it in a number of regions. These are regions where the election commissions, controlled by the government, refused to register the Batkivshchyna local branches in defiance of the Constitution and Ukraine’s legislation.

We refer in particular to the elections to Lviv regional and city councils, Luhansk city council, Ternopil city council, Oleksandriya town and Novoarkhangelsk district councils of Kyrovohrad region, and Kyiv city council. In the same way the government blocked Batkivshchyna’s participation in the elections to eight districts and six towns in Kyiv region: to Bohuslav, Boryspil, Vyshgorod, Kyiv-Sviatoshyn, Obukhiv, Stavyshchenks, Fastiv, and Yagotyn district councils, and the town councils of Boryspil, Brovary, Obukhiv, Pereyasliv-Khmelnytskiy, Rzhyshchev, and Fastiv.

In the elections to the above-mentioned councils, lists of false Batkivshchyna Party organizations were registered. These were created with the direct participation of the government represented by the President’s administration, the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of the Interior with their corresponding regional subdivisions, as well as the judicial system subordinated to Yanukovych. Here and there, the refusal to register the lists of the real Batkivshchyna branches took place despite decisions by the courts that ruled in our favour.

There were attempts to block Batkivshchyna’s participation in the elections in the Crimea, in Ivano-Frankivsk, Poltava and Cherkasy regions too.

To realize such gross violations of the electoral law, the government used disproportionately formed territorial and district election commissions. In defiance of the law, Batkivshchyna’s representatives were not included in over 3,000 district election commissions! Likewise, they are absent at half of the district election commissions in the Kyiv region, at 492 of 1228 district election commissions in the Crimea, at 323 of 1,425 commissions in the Luhansk region, and at 473 of 2,444 commissions in the Donetsk region. The record was set in Donetsk city: there is not a single representative of Batkivshchyna at 420 district election commissions of the regional center of Donetsk region!

At the same time, the representatives of the pro-government parties have the absolute majority in the commissions at all levels. One cannot speak of parity representation of the government and the opposition in these elections. There is complete dominance of the pro-government political forces in the commissions’ composition and executive positions. This is a major condition for vote-rigging.

In addition, all election participants are divided into two categories – the Party of Regions and the rest. Not only the opposition parties, but the members of the parliamentary majority, the members of the coalition “For Yanukovych and His Lawlessness” (Tihipko’s Strong Ukraine, Lytvyn’s People’s Party, the Communists and the Socialists) speak about the abuse of power. However, their complaints do not relieve them of their responsibility for rigged elections, at least, for creating the legal base for lawlessness.

Our final conclusions on this campaign are the following:

Against the drop in public support for Yanukovych’s policies and the consequent impossibility for him to win the elections, the government is steadily following the course of local vote-rigging, working under the self-evident Stalinist rule – “What is important is not who votes, but who counts the votes”.

Political and criminal responsibility for vote-rigging rests with Yanukovych personally. He is the mastermind and the main supervisor. Yanukovych had time to disprove the fact, but he is a person who is pathologically incapable of conducting a fair vote. Over his long political career, which started from his appointment as the Donetsk governor in 1997, he has not conducted a single fair campaign, and has consistently rigged elections since the presidential elections of 1999 to this year’s presidential and local elections.

There are many grounds to say: the local elections on Oct. 31 will be undemocratic, and will not conform to European standards of being free, fair and transparent elections. Party of Regions’ “result”, which was communicated to all governors, mayors, heads of regional councils, and heads of election commissions yesterday, and will be translated into false election protocols tomorrow, will have nothing in common with the real choice of Ukraine’s citizens. Such “elections” can be recognized neither in Ukraine, nor outside it.

Vote-rigging is the violation of not only Batkivshchyna’s and other parties’ rights, but of the rights of millions of Ukraine’s citizens, deprived by Yanukovych of their right to vote, to freely choose their government.

Nevertheless, we urge voters to take active part in the elections on Oct. 31, because Yanukovych’s people will use every ballot-paper of the person who fails to come to elections to “vote” for the Party of Regions. Thus, a low turnout is beneficial for the falsifiers. We urge you to protect your right for free choice, to expose the falsifiers, and to inform about violations using the free hotline 0800 50 4040.