This is again from my research on the perpetually put-off article I'd like to write.

The last Presidential election, in November of 1999, featured a runoff between incumbent President Leonid Kuchma and Communist Party Leader Petro Symonenko. It also featured many of the same problems that cropped up in the 2004 election. But in one way it was quite different.

As the Socialists had split away from the Communists years before this election, Symonenko was the leader of the least reformed, most backward-looking element of a party whose reason for existence was to look backward.

As such he was a far less attractive candidate thank Kuchma, no matter how corrupt or inefficient Kuchma's regime. The Kyiv Post gave its recommendations for Nov 1999 in this way(sorry, subscription only on the link):

While the Nov. 15 run-off election will pit incumbent Leonid Kuchma against Petro Symonenko, we prefer to look at the choice another way. Ukrainians can either vote for communism or against it. And that's really not that hard now, is it? You can choose to vote for the system that effectively failed to advance your country's economy in 70 years, or you can vote against it. You can vote for a system that stole land from your ancestors, forced the collectivization of your farms, and starved millions of your people to death in the process; or you can vote against it. You can vote for the system that imprisoned the minds of free-thinking individuals, blasphemed the sacred notion of free will, and buried your incentive to strive for personal excellence; or you can vote against it. You can vote for the system that lied to you time and time again - the system that told you with a straight face that nothing had happened when the Chernobyl blast was pumping live radioactive particles into the organs of your children; or you can vote against it.
Kyiv Post, November 11, 1999 - Opinion

Ukrainians voted. In fact, 70% of eligible voters did so. They had a very unpleasant choice, but they chose to back Kuchma despite the waste and misery of the last four years. Despite the fact that their economy had experienced negative growth in every one of the years of his presidency. Despite their often expressed dissatisfaction with the new Ukraine. The voters had the sophistication to separate bad practice from bad philosophy, to vote for democracy again after having literally lost their life savings as transition cost, and without hope of a reprieve from corrupt leaders. The final tally was Kuchma - 56%, Symonenko - 38%.

Thus I will first congratulate Ukrainians on their consistency.

But in the meantime, we've had another election. And the small band of detractors against this election tried to accuse organizations like the OSCE and Committee of Voters of Ukraine (CVU) of bias in favor of the "Western candidate", in an attempt to bring them down to the level of partiality displayed by the CIS observers.

This is crap, of course, and the 1999 election proves it. It was immediately and painfully obvious which ruler Europe would rather have in power. Kuchma was illiberal, but no Lukashenko. Kuchma, at least, was not against NATO, the EU, or greater ties with Europe. Kuchma, at least, was not for wholehearted support of greater integration with an anti-Europe Russia and disinterested in all things European.

Nonetheless, the OSCE delivered a final report that was, if anything, more scathing of Kuchma's government than in 2004. (if you would like a complete list of their documents on Ukrainian elections, click here) The opening words of the preliminary report released two days after the election were: "The conduct of the campaign for the second round of the presidential election in Ukraine was in breach of the election law and the relevant OSCE commitments on democratic elections and shows no improvement over the first round of the election."

Likewise, the CVU, quoted in this article in the Kyiv Post:

The Committee of Voters of Ukraine, a non-government organization that had put thousands of observers across the country on election day, confirmed the violations cited by foreign international observers. CVU chairman Ihor Popov said his agency recorded the gravest violations in Vinnytsia and Poltava oblasts, where local governors had been replaced after Socialist Party leader Oleksandr Moroz overwhelmingly beat Kuchma in those areas in the first-round vote. '[The new governors] tried to secure victory [for Kuchma] by all means,' Popov said. But regardless the mass violations, observers said it would be difficult to dispute the outcome of the vote because of an impressive gap between winner and loser.

Both of these organizations were resoundingly critical of the behavior of Kuchma's government in this election. Their suggestions were undoubtedly important in ensuring that, among other things, there were so many observers around in 2004 to see the election fraud.

The critical reason why Petro Symonenko lost was not lack of principled oversight by foreign observers, it was the one tucked in at the end of the last quote. He lost by an enormous margin, and a majority of voters clearly preferred Kuchma. There was no popular will to protest on his behalf.

The fact that Kuchma's campaign still felt the need to commit acts of fraud by the second round (after campaign as ugly as in 2004) reveals a lot about the character of the individuals in it. They were the same in 1999 as in 2004: illiberal and obviously mistrustful of citizens, even when their candidate was the strong favorite. To them it was worth committing fraud simply to improve their candidate's lead. Careless disregard for democratic process has been their consistent position.

So points to Ukrainian people, the OSCE, the CVU, and the Kuchma regime for consistency across 5 years.