The OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights has made public its final conclusions about parliamentary elections in Ukraine. After scrupulously studying the political situation in this country and analyzing the violations recorded by observers during the election campaign as well as media preferences for certain candidates, OSCE representatives are now advising Ukraine what it should do to have a more democratic election next time. The 25-page report is totally without emotion and impartial. All assertions seem to be based on evidence and facts. The observers repeat the previous conclusion made immediately after the voting: the 2002 elections brought Ukraine closer to meeting its international obligations and standards of democracy than was the case in 1998. However, the report quickly runs short of Ukrainian election achievements, while the list of violations continues from page to page. First the OSCE office gives a general appraisal: all the mass media, especially electronic, favored certain political forces, the authorities used their own means of influencing the electing process, while voting lists either included dead souls or were short of legitimate voters. Here are the main recommendations the observers give for the future elections: first, to make a greater political effort to stave off administrative abuse; secondly, to establish the Code of Election Laws with OSCE remarks taken into account; thirdly, to pass a law on centralized registration of voters; and, fourth, to pass a new law on establishing an independent commission to oversee the media during the elections. The OSCE representatives singled out the following drawbacks: abuse of office to conduct agitation or exert pressure; anonymous letters to discredit candidates; attaching positive and negative labels to politicians in television, radio, and press reports. The report points out that, although the election law forbids the authorities and electoral commission members to display preferences, it was often unclear in what capacity, as officeholder or candidate, a given person acted. Opposition candidates complained to the observers that they had been hampered from carrying out the election campaign, while the local mass media withheld information about them. These violations were especially glaring in Eastern Ukraine and the Crimea. The report also cites instances when people were rewarded in cash or kind for a vote cast in favor of a certain candidate, as well as cases when people were threatened with dismissal from work if they did not vote “the right way.” The observers were also informed that the rectors of two Ukrainian universities had instructed their students and professors to take ballot counterfoils and vote for certain candidates, Natalia VIKULINA reports from Brussels.
