Beware of the “parachute observers,” those
who drop in during the last few days and promptly call press conferences to proclaim
that all is well.
The morning after the Oct. 28 election,
two suspect groups called press conferences to declare that Ukraine’s
parliamentary vote was free, fair, legitimate, transparent and democratic.
One of the groups was the observing
mission of the Commonwealth of Independent States. This traveling circus of hacks
exists to give mutual support to any dictator or despot or election –
democratic or otherwise – that takes place in the former Soviet Union.
I cannot recall a single election in the
former Soviet Union that they have declared to be flawed or undemocratic.
This is the same group that even called
Belarus’ 2010 presidential election “legitimate, free and democratic.” Even
those living under a rock know that the 10 million person nation of Belarus is
run by a raving, ranting strongman by the name of Alexander Lukashenko.
Lukashenko throws his opponents in prison and
is suspected of much worse. Several of his political opponents have ended up
murdered or missing. He runs the nation with an iron fist. He tolerates no
dissent, no protests, no freedom of the press and no transparency. He is a
thug.
After winning in 2010, Lukashenko promptly
threw his defeated rival, Andrei Sannikov, in prison for 15 months. Britain has granted political asylum to Sannikov, who
fled the country to avoid arrest. Charter 97 news service reports that his
wife, Iryna Khalip, has been barred from traveling outside Belarus.
Lukashenko won another five-year term with an
unbelievable 80 percent of the vote and 90 percent voter turnout.
So what did Sergei Lebedev, the head of the CIS
observing mission to Belarus, say about the 2010 presidential election?
“We recognize this election as
legitimate. We have no doubts about that,” he told reporters.
Given that the group’s credibility is
zero, what did the CIS mission say this morning about Ukraine’s election?
The head of the monitoring
mission, Alexei Kochetkov, gave his stamp of approval. “In our opinion, the
elections were held successfully in Ukraine. They were transparent. The
obtained result reflects the will of the Ukrainian people.” Kochetkov
said.
And then there was this morning’s press
conference by a group that calls itself the European Academy for Election
Observation.
Under the headline: “International
observers say parliamentary elections in Ukraine were democratic,”
Interfax-Ukraine news agency wrote that the head of the observation mission,
Thierry Mariani, said this:
“The Ukrainian parliamentary
elections were held in compliance with democratic norms. Everything was quiet in the country on the election day,
with individual cases of technical organizational problems. There were no
reports of systematic violations.”
I have no idea who or what the European
Academy for Election Observation is. They have a website, but it’s very sparse
in information. But if Mariana saw no problems with Ukraine’s elections, he
must have just gotten off the plane and done his observing in the lobby of some
five-star hotel.
The violations in Ukraine’s parliamentary
election are there for everybody to see. The opposition claims to have recorded over 1,000 violations on Election Day alone, while the campaign was condemned as lacking fairness by many domestic and international observers.
So who to trust in the field of
international election observation?
There is really only one “gold standard,”
and that is run by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s
Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights.
It’s definitely a mouthful for a title.
And, considering that it officially represents all 56 nations in the OSCE, including
Ukraine, it’s a very bureaucratic international governmental organization.
But it also fields the most credible
election missions. They have an advanced, although imperfect, methodology and
draw on observers from many different nations. ODIHR has a permanent election division
in Warsaw, Poland, that regularly works with member nations about election law
and standards.
They deploy a core team of about 20 people
or so two months before the election, plus another 90 lont-term observers, and part of the team usually stays two weeks after the vote. In
between, hundreds of short-term observers are deployed on a short-term basis in
polling stations.
They’re not perfect. Their statements can
be stiff, dry and boring. They have a tendency of going too soft
on violations of free and fair elections, often for political reasons. They
also often send people into a country who have no knowledge of the language,
culture or political situation.
OSCE/ODIHR officials would argue that their observers don’t
make judgments that they cannot fully support with confirmed evidence. It’s true for the most part and this caution enhances their credibility but not necessarily their effectiveness.
One personal disclosure: I worked on the
core teams of five OSCE/ODIHR election observation missions, mostly as a
political analyst, from 1999-2004. I worked the 1999 presidential and 2002
parliamentary elections in Ukraine, the 2000 parliamentary and 2001
presidential election in Belarus and the 2004 parliamentary election in
Kazakhstan. All of them failed to meet democratic standards.
The United States and European Union put
the greatest weight on the findings of the OSCE/ODIHR international election
observation missions above all other groups.. So if their assessment of Ukraine’s election is harsh, which it is, Ukraine’s hopes for European integration will face another big
setback.
And no amount of rubber-stamping from
suspect observers will change that fact.
Kyiv Post chief editor Brian Bonner can be reached at [email protected]
