You're reading: With Party of Region candidate behind, vote count suspiciously slow in Irpin

 One of the slowest vote counts in the nation is taking place in a Kyiv Oblast district where the race is hard between a local university rector and two opposition candidates.

In district
number 95 in a town of Irpin near Kyiv only a little over 10 percent of votes
were counted as of 7:30 p.m., nearly 24 hours after the polling stations shut
down.

So far,
Vyacheslav Kutovyi from United Opposition Batkivshchyna leads with 26.7 percent
of votes. UDAR’s Oleksandr Yurakov is following in his footsteps with 23.12
percent.  

Incumbent member
of parliament from Party of Regions Petro Melnyk has 20.25 percent.

Melnyk, who
is heading the National University of State Tax Service of Ukraine in Irpin,
has not been without controversy since 2004. Then he was filmed urging students
of his university to vote for Viktor Yanukovych, who was then running against
Viktor Yushchenko.

In March he
used force against oppositional member of parliament Iryna Herashchenko as he
pushed her out from observing the count of votes in mayoral elections in a town
of Obukhiv.

The campaign
for parliament was also marred by the controversy as students and employees of
the university accused Melnyk of forcing them to get an absentee ballot to vote
in district number 95 where he runs.  

Opposition
and activists fear that slow count of votes this time is designed to help
Melnyk win and will add to the pile of his many controversies.

According to
Kutovyi’s representative, Andriy Khutoryanskyi, around 100 suspicious-looking
young men have arrived to the district electoral commission where the votes are
counted.  

There are
also several special forces men in the building as if “waiting for the order,”
Khutoryanskyi adds.

Local member
of a village council and activist Iryna Fedoriv wrote on her blog that the
tactics of slow count is used to “physically exhaust the observers and the
press.”

She added
that ENEMO observers were not allowed in the district electoral commission.

According to
the Central Election Commission, the slowest count of votes is taking place in
Kyiv and Kyiv Oblast, which they call “worrying.”  

Kyiv Post
staff writer Svitlana Tuchynska can be reached at [email protected]