Tuesday, September 18, 2007

How important will be the 'fiddle factor' in the September 30th elections?

Party of Regions have declared that in some parts of Ukraine, the oblast state administrations [ODA's] have distorted voter data in order to falsify VR election voting on September 30th.

They say that according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and state immigration service, in total, 3,323,000 Ukrainian citizens have left Ukraine in recent times, and have not returned. A large portion of these are from 'orange-supporting' western-most oblasts. At the same time, according to the data provided by the chairman of L'viv ODA as a result of the updating the list of voters, as of 16th August, the number of voters in the region has increased by almost 20%, even though, according to Ministry of Internal Affairs data, as of 19th August, more than 524,000 inhabitants from the L'viv oblast who have the right to vote in the elections, have gone abroad.

PoR say a similar situation allegedly exists in the Sumy region, which traditionally supports 'orange' politicians. There the number of voters has allegedly increased by more than 120,000. Most of the ODA heads may be considered to be pro-presidential in outlook.

PoR are convinced that: "..differences in the voter list data provided by the heads of the ODA's and that provided by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, may indicate intentional distortion by local organs of authority of statistical data for the purpose of illegally obtaining a significant extra quantity ballot papers for further criminal use during voting."

Meanwhile representatives of BYuT in the eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol revealed that the list of the city's voters which has been sent to the Central Election Commission, contains a large number of people with the almost identical surnames, christian names, patronymics, addresses and even dates of birth. Senior BYuT leader Mykola Tomenko claims there could be 19,000 "pseudo-persons" on the list. If similar 'Mariupol-twins' scams are being prepared elsewhere, "then we can expect possible large-scale preparation for the falsification of electoral lists," warned Tomenko. BYuT is passing on all the documents to the CEC for thorough checking.

LEvko thinks a significant number of politicians in Ukraine would be quite happy with a 'Florida scenario' and have the entire vote annulled, so expect see more fiddles* than in the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie hall in days to come.
*to fiddle - to cheat [British Informal]

No comments: