The incumbent President of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, who had to pull out of the presidential race for the obvious reasons, voiced his overall verdict on the first round: “We have conveyed a message that contains many things the Ukrainian people should know when making their national choice. I don’t think that the National Idea has failed. This election is just proof that this idea remains to be developed.”
Yushchenko went on to say that he would support neither Tymoshenko nor Yanukovych, who will have to fight the final runoff battle scheduled for February 7.
Ukraine, meanwhile, is receiving congratulations on fair presidential election. US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley is quoted by the Voice of America as saying: “We congratulate the Ukrainian people on the conduct of their January 17 presidential elections, which the OSCE deemed to have been high-quality, showing significant progress over previous election… This is another significant demonstration of the development of democracy in Ukraine. The U.S. looks forward to free and fair runoff elections on February 7, and working with whomever the Ukrainians choose as their next president.”
As for the Kremlin (considering its more than enthusiastic involvement in and with the Ukrainian presidential campaign in 2004), this time the attitude is markedly more cautious, with both Medvedev and Putin declining comment on the election’s first round’s outcome and that of the runoff. The international observers are sure that this election campaign is a step forward, despite certain minor violations of the election law. The foreign experts are impressed by the level on which the current election was held.
There are 3,149 officially registered international observers from 16 countries and 17 international organizations, among them OSCE, Parliamentary Assembly, NATO, CIS-EMO including representatives of seven countries. Many of them monitored the 2004 presidential race, although there were 12,500 international observers present at the time.
It is also true that a number of Ukrainian political analysts are critical about the first round of the presidential elections and expect foul play in the runoff.
Viktor Nebozhenko, director, Ukrainian Barometer Sociological Service, says: “Whereas election fraud amounted to five percent in 2004, it may well reach ten percent in 2010, including up to twenty percent during the local elections in May 2010.” He predicts that the runoff will be “a Battle of Stalingrad between the BYuT and Party of Regions (PR) campaign headquarters, also between courts of law, Maidan-like projects, and power structures.” Both the east and west of Ukraine recognize the first round as one that has been carried out on a fair, open, and democratic basis. This is the good news. The bad news is that there is a big difference between the quality of the runoff and that of the choice we will have to make come February 7. There doesn’t seem much left in terms of choice quality, but we knew whose ballots we were casting, didn’t we?
