European Forum

Tensions rise ahead of Presidential poll in Ukraine

On Sunday 17 January, Ukrainians will go to the polls for the first Presidential elections since the Orange Revolution in 2004 brought pro-Western forces to power. Tension are rising between the candidates ahead of the poll, with Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko accusing her main rival, Party of Regions (PoR) leader Viktor Yanukovych, of preparing huge fraud.

Fraud accusations
Tymoshenko said a "deliberate disruption of the election process" was taking place on behalf of Yanukovych. An unusually high number of voters in Yanukovich's home region of Donetsk had opted to vote from home, showing the organising hand of his PoR, she said . Home voting was widely abused in 2004 to skew election results because it allowed officials to bypass the secret ballot and did not require voters to prove their identity. Eight members of the Central Electoral Committee are in the pay of the Yanukovich camp, Timoshenko added. She said she intended to take her complaints to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which has sent election monitors to Ukraine. "Such monstrous falsification didn't even happen in 2004," she stated.

“Not the opposition, but ruling party will cheat”
But Mr Yanukovych dismissed the accusations, saying only the ruling party could arrange fraud. "How can the opposition falsify results? Only the authorities have that ability - they have the mechanism, structure, the interior ministry," he said.

Mrs Tymoshenko was one of the leaders of the Orange Revolution that rose up after Mr Yanukovych's false victory last time. But she has since fallen out with her Orange ally, Viktor Yushchenko, and is hoping to replace him as President. The last couple of months the race of the contest focused on the two frontrunners Yanukovych and Timoshenko, with Yanukovych being far ahead of Timoshenko.

Remarkable latest polls
An opinion poll that was released on 13 January and carried out by a Russian state-run agency showed an apparent surge by an alternative candidate, Sergei Tigipko, a former Economy Minister. This poll (with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points) put Tigipko slightly ahead of Timoshenko with 14.4%, while the PM’s rating was put on 13.9%. Also a recent Ukrainian survey, put Tigipko ahead of Timoshenko in southern and eastern Ukraine, but behind the PM in the country as a whole.

The wealthy financier Tigipko said he has already spent about million of his banking fortune on the campaign, bolstering the image he has tried to project of an independent candidate not beholden to any of Ukraine's business or political factions. Tigipko's popularity began to surge after the amateur bodybuilder appeared on the December cover of Men's Health magazine in Ukraine wearing a tight T-shirt and jeans. He followed this up with appearances on TV talk shows and a huge advertising campaign that covered the Ukrainian capital with his billboards. He now even threatens to knock Tymoshenko out of the expected runoff vote to be held in February. Tigipko ran the first phase of Yanukovych's 2004 Presidential bid.

Demonstrations restricted
Meanwhile, a Ukrainian court banned all mass rallies on Kiev's Independence Square -the heart of the "Orange Revolution" protests- for the next three weeks, local media reported. The Kiev Administrative Court ruled in favor of a demand by local authorities to ban rallies from 9 January to 5 February because so many parties -including Yanukovich's PoR- wanted to stage demonstrations during that time. 

Big list of candidates
18 candidates are running in the race, among which also former Parliament Chairman, Arseniy Yatseniuk, of the Front for Change and Parliamentary Deputy Anatoly Hrytsenko.  Mr Yanukovych remains far ahead all candidates with 30.5%. President Viktor Yushenko, on the other hand, has according to latest polls little chance of being re-elected with only single number ratings.

Official results are expected on 27 January. If none of the 18 candidates gets more than 50 percent of the vote, as seems likely, there will be a runoff between the two top vote getters on 7 February.

Apathy among voters
Meanwhile, there is a high apathy among Ukrainian citizens. People do not believe the elections will bring a difference in the country and see the poll as merely a race for power among the candidates. According to polls, about a quarter of voters are prepared to loose their vote and not go out to vote. Those numbers may be unremarkable by European standards, but they are high for Ukraine, where citizens are active voters.

Several people even offered on internet to sell their votes. "I don't believe in our democracy and so I am selling my vote in the elections," said one Internet advertisement. According to analysts this shows the disappointment and cynical attitude of voters towards politics and politicians in the country. The State Security Service had no comment to make on the offers, but a central election commission official said buying votes was illegal and subject to criminal prosecution. It did not appear, however, to be an offence to offer votes for sale.

At stake
At stake in the election is the ex-Soviet republic's future place in Europe and relations with former Soviet master Russia, which have deteriorated under Yushchenko. Next to that, the country of 46 million is deep in economic recession and the political feuding, particularly between Yushchenko and Tymoshenko, has imperiled a 16.4 billion dollar bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Sources: KyivPost; Reuters; BBC; Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (image)