You're reading: Reasons for election cancellation in Mariupol, Krasnoarmiisk remain in dispute

The cancelled elections in the Donetsk Oblast’s Mariupol and Krasnoarmiisk may have disappointed voters and been used as anti-Ukrainian arguments by separatist leaders, but some analysts say they in fact show that Ukraine is ready to break free from former bad habits.

The botched elections in the war-front towns dominated headlines on Oct. 25, with many expressing shock that voters were prohibited from voting altogether. The local elections in Ukraine have largely been seen as a litmus test for the country’s ability to root out corruption and embrace democracy, so the last-minute cancellation of elections came as an embarrassment to some.

While separatist leaders Denis Pushilin and Igor Plotnitsky seized upon the cancelled elections to rejoice in Ukraine’s supposed non-democratic methods, experts said that given the circumstances, the authorities did the right thing by halting the vote.

President Petro Poroshenko praised the handling of elections, hinting in comments to Interfax-Ukraine on Oct. 26 that a disaster had been averted in Mariupol and Krasnoarmiisk.

“Russia’s attempt to create a pro-Russian fifth column in our country failed,” he said.

At the same time, election watchdog NGO Opora criticized the election cancellation, saying it was a politically motivated decision.

“The political – and not legal – issues that caused the cancellation of the election led to the voting right being stolen from a huge number of people,” Olga Aivazovska, head of Opora, said on Oct. 26.

Mariupol

Chaos had been brewing in Mariupol days before the election on Oct. 25, as activists demanded the vote be postponed once they learned the ballots would be printed at the Pryazovsky printing house, reportedly owned by oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, who is widely believed to support Opposition Bloc, the successor to the ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions.

Fears abounded that extra ballots were going to be printed to give the Opposition Bloc an unfair win, resulting in protests at the printing house and, ultimately, the vote being called off altogether.

The night before the vote, officials from the Mariupol Election Commission visited the printing house to find numerous violations in the ballots: two sets, ballots on the floor, ballots with one mayoral candidate listed twice. Eleven of the 16 members on the commission opted to discard the ballots altogether.

A standoff between supporters of the Opposition Bloc, representing the old regime, and pro-Maidan activists ensued, with both sides accusing the other of being behind the flawed ballots. Those in favor of the Opposition Bloc claimed pro-Maidan parties had orchestrated the incident to mask their dwindling popularity, while the pro-Maidan side said the Opposition Bloc had been plotting mass ballot stuffing to win.

Yegor Firsov, a Donetsk Oblast lawmaker, said the commission had been compromised by oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, who he says paid its members to allow ballots to be printed at his printing house.

“I think more money has gone through the Central Elections Commission and the Mariupol Elections Commission in the last week than through Cyprus,” he wrote in a blog for online news site Ukrainska Pravda.

Akhmetov denied the accusations of bribing the commission in Mariupol.

Analysts agreed that the likely culprit was pro-Opposition Bloc forces.

Viktor Nebozhenko, head of the Ukrainian Barometer center for sociological research, told the Kyiv Post he believed separatists had sought to falsify the election results – but Ukraine had been wise enough to prevent it.

“The fact that the separatists are rejoicing in the cancellation of our elections is no surprise. And it’s no big deal,” Nebozhenko said. “But the fact that Ukraine wasn’t afraid of this happening, and instead chose to abide by democratic procedures rather than formally going ahead and conducting the vote anyway – that gives Ukraine a big political advantage, bigger than the criticism coming from the Kremlin and the separatists.”

The main take-away for everyone, he said, is that falsifications will not be permitted, “so they should just stop trying, as they always do, to falsify everything in these separatist areas.”

Sociologist Iryna Bekeshkina of the Democratic Initiatives Foundation agreed.

“If they printed two different sets of ballots, why would they do that? It’s clear that they were aiming for massive falsifications; these people who consider themselves the masters of Mariupol decided to put pressure on the elections commission, and they decided that’s how things would be solved. But there were forces to stand up against these informal masters of Mariupol,” she said.

Ideally, Bekeshkina said, if the elections were truly democratic, they should have been held without such attempts at foul play, but the fact that authorities prevented major violations was a “step toward democracy.”

This is the first time candidates are actually competing with each other rather than “making deals to decide the results in advance,” she said.

The Opposition Bloc, for its part, issued a statement on Oct. 25 accusing local authorities in Mariupol of “disrupting the election” to hide their own dwindling popularity.

Krasnoarmiisk

Elections in Krasnoarmiisk followed a similar scenario as those in Mariupol, with last-minute confusion over the voting ballots leading to them never showing up to the polling stations.

Vyacheslav Abroskin, the police chief of Donetsk Oblast, wrote on his Facebook page that the “transfer of the ballots from the territorial elections commission to the election precincts never took place,” a development that the head of the elections commission said was the result of a stamp missing from the ballots.

A local court later deemed the ballots invalid and ordered all polling stations closed.

Bekeshkina said that while the move may have been disappointing for voters, it signified progress just like the cancelled vote in Mariupol.

“They wouldn’t allow elections to be held with major violations. I don’t see anything wrong with that. They prevented fraud,” she said.

The main thing was stopping the violations, she said, though rescheduling the elections and ensuring that they go smoothly is a whole different matter, as the situation is “unprecedented.”

Poroshenko said on Oct. 25 that the parliament will adopt the legislation to allow the elections in Mariupol and Krasnoarmiisk take place on Nov. 15, when the rest of the country will have the second round of the mayor elections. But some say it’s too soon.

Oleksiy Koshel, the general director of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine elections watchdog, said at a press conference in Kyiv on Oct. 26 that the elections in Mariupol and Krasnoarmiisk should be postponed until 2016 rather than Nov. 15 as planned.

The second try of the elections will have a more positive result, he said, if held in early 2016, because increased public attention will ensure more honesty and transparency in the process.

Kyiv Post staff writer Allison Quinn can be reached at [email protected].