Civil Network OPORA has said Batkivschyna Party leader Yulia Tymoshenko and incumbent President Petro Poroshenko were the most active presidential candidates during the first month of campaigning.
“In January 2019, twenty-eight persons, most of whom were not registered presidential candidates began campaigning. Poroshenko and Tymoshenko were the absolute leaders in terms of the scale and intensity of campaign activities during January 2019. Also active were Radical Party leader Oleh Liashko, Samopomich Party leader Andriy Sadovy,” OPORA said on their website on Thursday.
OPORA observers said Poroshenko’s election team is seen to hire budget workers to conduct polls.
“Poroshenko’s election team, when Poroshenko had not been registered as a candidate yet, organized a nationwide sociological survey. This is actually a form of campaigning. Not only the candidate’s supporters and neutral persons were engaged in this process, but also workers from institutions funded from the state budget. This activity exemplifies the illegal expenditure of funds allocated for the campaign (before creation of the election fund), as well as signs of misusing administrative resources,” OPORA said.
The observers said monitoring of regional visits by candidates and potential candidates had revealed 10 cases when goods were given to citizens on behalf of the would-be presidential candidates.
“This includes cases of participation of political leaders in the official presentation of goods purchased with budget funds. Most often, this format of campaigning was used by Liashko (four times) and Poroshenko (three times),” OPORA said.
OPORA observers sent 239 complaints to regional offices of Ukraine’s National Police over the period.
“Most of them involved distribution of printed materials without information about the institution that carried out the printing, the circulation, persons responsible for the release and the customer of the relevant materials. Most of these cases involved the activity Sadovy and Civil Position Party leader Anatoliy Hrytsenko.
