Election Day is on Sunday, but it feels more like Christmas in some of Ukraine's districts.
Yury Kruk,
a Party of Regions candidate running for a single-mandate seat in Odesa Oblast,
decided to attract supporters by organizing a sports competition in a local
village and giving out lambs to the winners.
Meanwhile,
Valentyn Nechyporenko, a self-nominated candidate in Cherkasy Oblast,
entertained potential voters by giving them free horse rides on his farm.
The people seem
happy, unlike the observers, who call these gifts a cynical bribing of
voters.
Aside from
using ordinary food packages with buckwheat and sugar, politicians now try to
lure in voters with ice cream or sparkling wine bottles featuring portraits of
candidates, vodka, glasses, tickets to a night club or circus, free visits to
the doctor or hair stylist.
Bribing
voters has become the most popular form of electoral manipulation, according to
Oleksand Chernenko, head of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine. “In the
beginning of the campaign it was presents, food packages, bicycles and
textbooks. Now the bribes are massively paid in cash all over Ukraine,” he
said.
Cash bribes
typically vary from Hr 50 to Hr 500 for a vote, depending on the district,
observers say.
Chernenko,
an experienced election monitor, says paying for votes began in the 2002
parliamentary election campaign, which in many ways resembled the current ones.
But now the
methods are much more advanced.
“If 10
years ago the money was paid in cash, now it is delivered to card accounts,”
Chernenko said. “People also offer to sell votes through special groups in
social networks.”
Viktor
Garbar, coordinator of the Maidan Monitoring: Elections 2012 civic campaign,
which collects people’s reports about electoral violations, called such bribery
a form of “social corruption.” He things it is quite effective, particularly
given that large numbers of people are indifferent to voting, but have a keen
interest in supporting their families.
Politicians
openly admit they don’t see this as a big problem.
Volodymyr
Rybak, a Party of Regions lawmaker, said he never dissuades his electorate from
accepting the bribes from other candidates. “If somebody brings you buckwheat,
condensed milk or sugar, take it, do not refuse. But then go and vote the way
you want,” Rybak said.
The
delivery system is simple, and works on the same basis as marketing through
networks.
A person who
officially works as an agitator receives a big sum on their bank account and
then hands over the bribes to friends and acquaintances. If the results of a
candidate are good, the agitator will receive more money to hand out as a
bonus. This helps ensure a candidate’s finances are used properly.
“For example,
in one Kyiv district, Hr 150 is paid per
person before the elections and around Hr 200 after,” Chernenko said, adding
that even if around 80 percent of people who received the money, voted for
candidate, the bribe would be successful.
This method
is quite safe for politicians. Despite dozens of cases of bribes reported by
observers only a tiny part reach the courts, according to Olga Aivazovska from
the OPORA election watchdog. While the punishment for bribing voters can be up
to two years in prison, Ukraine’s United State Register of Court Decisions
indicates only one case in which two people were sentenced to two-year
suspended prison sentence this year.
Chernenko said
bribes are now so popular because Ukrainians have become more resistant to
state and local pressure to support a particular candidate – commonly used
practice during previous elections.
“Now it’s
very hard to intimidate a Ukrainian voter, but it’s very easy to buy him,”
Chernenko said.
Kyiv Post
staff writer Oksana Grytseko can be reached at [email protected]
