A series of resolutions abrogated by the Supreme Court of Ukraine, the deliberately delayed announcement of the outcome of the first round of voting, and a time bomb planted for the runoff, are what the Central Election Commission (CEC) has achieved so far. Instead of a guarantor of free and democratic elections, the CEC has turned into a menace to elections.
The CEC was severely criticized during the previous election, which witnessed gross abuses of authority. But the previous CEC staff, headed by Mykhailo Ryabets, did not act so odiously as the present one, headed by Serhiy Kivalov, is acting. The CEC constantly violates the law, which is best proven by the fact that the Supreme Court has abrogated most of the resolutions passed by the CEC. The most conspicuous of these was the resolution on setting up a total of 400 additional electoral precincts in Russia, which was passed one day past the deadline set by election law. All members of the commission understood that it was a violation, but the majority said “yea”.
The government-controlled mass media sang praises to Viktor Yanukovych, but the CEC stubbornly refused to call such activities canvassing. At the same time, in defiance of all procedural norms, the CEC sent a warning to the opposition TV Channel 5 for broadcasting a Yulia Tymoshenko speech praising Yushchenko’s victory before official returns were made public. The commission had no right to accept any complaints with regard to violations during the 31 October vote if such complaints were filed after 1 November. Besides, it was against active legislation and common sense to penalize Channel 5 for broadcasting Tymoshenko’s speech.
Kivalov blames local authorities for multitudinous errors in voter lists, but the CEC must be equally responsible. Observers had repeatedly pointed to the unprecedented scale of this problem prior to the voting. According to the Committee of Voters of Ukraine (CVU), every tenth Ukrainian voter was unable to cast the ballot on 31 October. One member of the CEC even found an error in his personal data at his polling station (only his CEC member ID helped him prove that he was 20 years younger than the voter list said).
But has anyone been punished? No. The CEC did not respond after the first round and is evidently reluctant to take any action now. Kivalov said that all voter lists were compiled by local authorities, who were to blame for the errors, but that doesn’t sound convincing enough. Firstly, the CEC should have organized a review of voter lists by members of precinct commissions. Secondly, it should have initiated a demonstrative legal prosecution of at least one local administrator on charges of power abuse. And thirdly, it was the commission’s duty to investigate the reported distortions in voter lists by members of local election commissions. Do such facts need any more proof if some voters, who found misspellings in their names and demanded corrections, found the same or other errors on the very next day?
Probably, the only thing that may inspire some optimism is the commission’s decision on additional protection of absentee voter certificates. These are standard-form documents allowing a voter to cast his/her ballot at a polling station other than the designated one, should the voter be outside his/her place of residence on the election day. Two visible and two invisible signs are supposedly good protection against photocopying. It should be noted, however, that the technique of multiple voting by specially selected “traveling agents” at different polling stations did not help the authorities much as observers with video cameras scared them off.
The Central Election Commission is the main impediment to normal electoral procedures. By withholding the returns of the 31 October vote for 10 days, the commission marred its reputation with an indelible stain. As one of its members put it, in seven days the commission destroyed what had been created for seven years. The problem is not information of national importance. The problem is who did it and what for.
Most observers and analysts, however, feel sure that those who ordered the delay wanted to leave Yushchenko without the advantages of the victory in the first round. Just a few hours after the polls closed, the Yanukovych team knew that Yushchenko would be the winner. When 97.67 percent of vote protocols had been processed, the CEC halted the computer count and delayed the manual count until the 11th hour. That gave Yanukovych three advantages.
Number one: He was reported to be the winner for 10 out of 20 days between the first round and the runoff. The votes for Yushchenko were the last to be counted, both electronically and manually. The CEC annulled 2.33 percent of votes, and most of them were for Yushchenko. According to CEC member Andriy Magera, a representative of the opposition, Yushchenko won in 44 out of the 49 constituencies, from which original copies of vote protocols allegedly arrived late.
Number two: The absence of the official returns stalled Yushchenko’s promotional campaign for more than a week. He found himself at a disadvantage while Prime Minister Yanukovych continued to promote his government’s social policy. And when Yushchenko gathered a rally of protest against falsifications in Kyiv, his opponents immediately challenged its legitimacy.
Number three: Provoking Yushchenko by withholding the information about his victory in the first round, the Yanukovych team tried to lure him into the old trap and expose him as a radical extremist. Yanukovych’s campaign engineers expected Yushchenko to kick up a row, instigate protest demonstrations, and curse the dishonest authorities on TV. In the eyes of the general public, Yushchenko would look as if he was declaring war, while Yanukovych was working hard to raise salaries and pensions. The public would see Yushchenko in a snit about a few hundredths of a percent and not allowing the CEC to finish counting the ballots. Viewers were to be shown once again who really cared about this country and who was obsessed by his maniacal desire to win at any cost. The Yushchenko team should be given credit: after a short storm of indignation, it found the courage to bite off its own paw and so escaped the trap.
It is too bad that the CEC got involved in this game. There is information proving that its members were directly involved in manipulations with the 31 October election returns. The key role in the machinations with the computer count of ballots was played by a certain Sergey Katkov. He was appointed chief of the CEC computerdepartment four weeks before the election. Under a pretext of testing and checking the system, he obtained all keys, passwords, and codes from the developer company Procom, a member of the Atlas consortium. According to experts, that was when an additional communication link appeared in the system. It was fitted in between the transport server, which received vote protocols from local election commissions, and the central server, which summed up all incoming data. That link enabled third users to view and sift out all incoming protocols before passing them on to the central server.
This explains why the computer system worked so strangely. It was due to external manipulation that the early returns showed Yanukovych’s landslide advantage. If we look at the time the vote protocols were sent from local commissions and compare it with the time they arrived at the CEC central server, we can see that the protocols showing Yushchenko’s advantage arrived almost 100 hours after they were sent! It was due to external interference that the data inflow was portioned. According to Procom, whose reputation has been confirmed by successful fulfillment of previous orders from the CEC, the Rada, the Minister of Interior Affairs, and other “special clientele,” the maximum data transmission time is 25 minutes. It means that, at least every half hour, the CEC should have received vote protocols from local election commissions. But the protocols arrived in hour or two-hour intervals and in large packages. The explanation is simple. Those who controlled the transport server needed some time to view the incoming data before sending “favorable” protocols to the CEC.
According to our information, the computer system did not distort the data stated in the vote protocols. After it underwent a checkup, all members of the commission understood that it was simply being manipulated. Nevertheless, when 97.67 percent of vote protocols had been processed, Kivalov ordered to switch it off. Why? Was he tied by his obligations before those who “installed” Katkov in the CEC, or was he afraid that the computer system generated false data? The answer is known to Kivalov only.
Katkov was sacked, but nothing was done to protect the system from unauthorized interference. According to some sources, Kivalov is inclined to give up the computer count of ballots. But however complex the situation is, the electronic count appears to be the fastest. The decision to count paper protocols only may delay the process, thus giving the authorities more time for “correcting” the returns.
Yushchenko, who is the indisputable leader after the first round, is the last to be interested in this mode. Socialist Party leader Alexander Moroz and president of the Ukrainian League and Industrialists and Entrepreneurs Anatoliy Kinakh declared their support for Yushchenko in the runoff. The best the Yanukovych team could do was enlist Progressive Socialist Party leader Natalia Vitrenko, who is already past her peak in public politics. Well-informed sources warn that the Yanukovych team, anticipating a bad turn, may resort to lawsuits to get the election annulled.
And in this “court war” the CEC again runs against the law. Its decision to annul the returns in Constituency #100, Kirovograd region, is but too indicative. Instead of counting the ballots in place of the constituency commission members, who sabotaged their duty, the CEC invalidated the election in that constituency. That was a blow to Yushchenko, who collected an overwhelming majority of votes in that constituency. But what is even worse, this precedent is a time bomb that may explode in the 21 November runoff as it unties Yanukovych’s hands: He may well wreck the election if he loses. The pro-Yanukovych members of local election commissions where they make up a majority will simply leave the voter protocols unsigned. Then, by CEC logic, the election in those constituencies must be declared invalid.
The Central Election Commission is just a product of the system, which Yushchenko’s supporters are so willing to get rid of. In defiance of all democratic rules, common sense, and conscience, the CEC was staffed mostly by representatives of pro-presidential forces. Only four out of its 15 members represent opposition parties: two Communists, one Socialist, and one Our Ukraine member.
The Yanukovych team puts formidable pressure to bear on the commission, using money, threats, and surveillance. We possess no evidence of the CEC member Maryna Stavniychuk being paid by Vice Prime Minister Andriy Klyuyev. But the way she voted in the CEC ruined her reputation in the eyes of journalists, who remembered her excellent performance as a member of the previous CEC staff. The people from Kivalov’s camp deny allegations about criminal cases against his daughter and son-in-law,. but they admit to the fact that he is not at all independent in decision-making.
It would be wrong to call the CEC a blind weapon in the Ukrainian leadership’s hands. Only five members are set to implicitly follow Yanukovych’s interests. The rest can say a resolute “no” at the decisive moment, especially if they see that his rival outstrips him. But that is hardly a reliable antidote. What can really prevent falsifications is the active position of the voters. They must verify their personal data in voter lists, the observers must do everything they can to counter violations at polling stations, and the commission members must obtain official vote protocols from polling stations. As one commission member said, “Nothing will beat the protocols.” The Central Election Commission, formed and manipulated by the authorities, cannot hold a fair election. The question is how much will it get in the way of a fair election.
Yehor Sobolev