The Violations and Falsifications in the Election
Tuesday, November 23, 2004 at 10:12AM
Dan McMinn in 32) Nov 2004 Pres. Election
Here is a list of some of the reasons there are a million people in
Kyiv protesting the official government election results: (see the OSCE preliminary findings for a good, balanced discussion of the irregularities)
- 96.3% turnout in Donetsk, 88.4% turnout in Luhansk (they didn't even get this high a turnout in Stalinist times)
- Almost 5% of voters in this election were added to voter lists
on election day, and almost all of the additions were using
Absentee ballot forms. (meaning people coming in from other areas, and
thus not necessarily having residences in the places they voted) This
is expected to have been a way to allow voters to be transported to
multiple election locations to vote.
- Widespread allegations of employees forced to take out
Absentee Ballots and turn them over to their superiors at work, thus
depriving them of the ability to vote.
- Hundreds of local voting commission members from the
opposition in pro-Yanukovych areas were dismissed from the commissions
just before election day
- Hundreds more opposition observers trying to monitor polling stations were kicked out of those stations during the vote count.
In addition to the election-day fraud, protesters also had the
following activity from the first round of the election and the
campaign to get their blood boiling:
- Voting lists that were inexplicably riddled with errors during the
first round. As many as 10% of voters were turned back at polling
places because 1) their names were misspelled, 2) their birthdates were
wrong, 3) their patronymics were wrong, 4) women still had their maiden
names, and so on. Encouragingly, this problem was mostly corrected in
the second round but the massive disenfranchisement in the first round
was aggravating.
- The campaign was marked by ugly slander, completely devoid
of facts or honest discourse, the majority of which was on the part of
the administration. By taking advantage of "administrative resources"
(the ability of current government officials to use their positions to
conduct campaign activities) this kind of slander could be frequently
trotted in front of voters, like these examples from a public train right before the first round.
- All major television media, and most print media, which are
owned by pro-administration businessmen or by the state, were absurdly
biased in their reporting. The OSCE found that 43% of the material
covered was covered in a "conspicuously similar manner". What this
indicated to the OSCE was that it was likely that opposition claims
about temnyky are correct. The temnyky are allegedly small briefings
from government officials telling reporters what and what not to
report, as well as how to report. [later addition of supporting
evidence: journalists from top TV stations 1+1, Inter, and public
station UT1 have publicly renounced the "biased reporting methods" they
said they were told to use, some in front of the crowds at the rallies]
In any case, the OSCE also found that state channel UT1 gave 64% of
it's political and election primetime to Yanukovych, 99% of which was
positive or neutral reporting. In contrast, Yushchenko got 21% of
political and election primetime, of which only 46% was positive or
neutral. This was typical.
- In September, Yushchenko disappeared from his campaign as he
was rushed to a hospital in Vienna. He emerged from the hospital
horribly scarred. He still bears the swollen and misshapen face he
returned to Ukraine with a couple weeks later. The opposition thinks he
was poisoned, and no doctor has found the agent used on him yet.
The government initially made pacifying gestures, but eventually came
right out and said he'd faked it, then decided that he hadn't faked it,
it had be an allergic reaction to botox injections due to complications
arising from long-term alcoholism.
- Every single pro-opposition media outlet in the country (and
every neutral outlet, like Radio Liberty) was either shut down, or
subject to allegations of terrorism, or accused of tax fraud, or
accused of holding an improper license... To take Radio Liberty as an
example, the radio stations carrying its programs decided that it
didn't make sense to broadcast them, even though Radio Liberty showed
that the business was profitable. Radio Liberty then negotiated with
another station, and during negotiations, the man negotiating with them
died either in a car accident or in a mugging, I can't remember which
it was attributed to.
Article originally appeared on Orange Ukraine (http://orangeukraine.squarespace.com/).
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