Donetsk, the industrial coal-producing heartland of Eastern Ukraine is Viktor Yanukovych's hometown, and voters here came out in droves to cast their vote for the man they want as their president. The tension was palpable and many people were visibly angry at being forced to vote for a third time in eight weeks. Powerful allies backing Yanukovych waged an intense media campaign here, and the Donetsk-based TV channel has broadcast an aggressively anti-opposition and pro-Yanukovych slant. Both in November and last night, Yanukovych received more than 90 per cent of the vote in Donetsk.
As an international election observer, I was there was a neutral presence to watch for and record any electoral wrongdoings. In November, observers reported widespread voting manipulation in Donetsk. In this round, scores of observers — both international and from Ukraine — descended on Donetsk, determined to deter any voter fraud. In addition to official observers, Ukrainian journalists were present at some polling stations.
Although the massive vote-rigging that defined the last round of elections was not repeated, multiple voting, and intimidation of election committee members, media and observers, were among the problems I witnessed in Donetsk on December 26.
Our team of four Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) election observers was assigned 155 polling stations in Makiivka, a Donetsk suburb of over 300,000 people. We worked in two teams of two, coordinating and communicating by cell phone. The polling stations in Makiivka were spread out, ranging from clusters in the centre to others scattered among difficult-to reach rural areas accessible only by muddy roads littered with potholes. I am fluent in Ukrainian so language in this predominantly Russian-speaking region was another hurdle.
On the day before the election, my partner and I scoped out our territory and talked to as many people as possible in order to determine which polling stations could potentially be problematic. On election day, we visited more than dozen. In many cases, we were warmly welcomed, and according to local customs of hospitality, offered food and drink. In these cases, voting was processing smoothly and by the book.
That was, however, not always the case. In one polling station located in a hospital the secretary of the local electoral committee tried to prevent us from entering. In that station, we found a falsified voting list where each voter's name and address had been handwritten line after line in the exact same penmanship. All 141 voters had voted that morning, the secretary insisted. Each of the 141 signatures we saw was identical.
We visited two voting districts where entire blocks of buildings were duplicated, meaning people could vote in more than one polling station. In some electoral districts, people who came in and complained that they were missing from the list of registered voters were simply penciled in and allowed to vote, contrary to Ukraine's electoral laws which states that no names can be added to the list on voting day.
Still, our very presence in Makiivka made a difference. We visited one polling station the day before voting and asked why they were proposing that almost 200 people be added to the voting list. Less than 24 hours later, that number was magically brought down to less than 50.
Mobile ballot boxes and absentee voting — major problems in previous elections — were not an issue in Makiivka on December 26. Intimidation was. On the day before the election, we heard rumours that Yanukovych backers were harassing members of Yushchenko's election team in an effort to scare them from attending the local election meetings.
