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Elections over...long live elections!
Vol. 6, No. 179, June 26, 2000
This June has proved to be rich in election campaigns. In Zaporizhya, on June 4, 2000, and in
Mykolayiv and Vinnytsya on June 11, local residents elected their mayors. On June 25, a number of
Ukrainian constituencies will vote for parliamentary candidates to fill in 10 vacated, due to different
reasons, by MPs elected in 1998. In this context, the recent mayoral elections, particularly in
Zaporizhya, where the by-elections will take place on June 25, can be viewed as a specific electoral
prelude to the general election situation in this country.
The voting patterns of the recent mayoral elections give grounds for forecasts for the forthcoming by-
elections which, according to the Presidential chief of staff Volodymyr Lytvyn, will determine the
political process in the near future (Den, April 1, 2000). The election patterns will also characterize,
among other things, the level of influence and the capacity of political parties to win elections. While it
is obvious that the mayoral elections have their own specific features, the election techniques employed
in the competition for mayoral seats have much in common with the major parliamentary campaign.
Like in the local elections, the by-elections will be a tough competition of personalities, political forces
and wallets backing individual candidates.
The recent mayoral elections in some of Ukraine's cities allow some conclusions that may be
interesting in the context of the forthcoming by-elections. First and one of the most important
conclusions is the remarkably low voter turnout. While partly voters' reluctance to turn up to polling
stations may be explained by the summer vacation time and the fact that many of Ukrainians prefer to
spend days off at their land plots growing the food they will consume in winter, another reason was the
growing social apathy to elections of any sort and to the voting process, as ordinary voters see no
results that would indicate their votes did make a difference. A high proportion of voters believes that
election results are pre-determined.
In fact, Ukrainians have had to cast their votes rather often lately, in two rounds of the presidential
elections in October-November 1999 and the April 16 referendum, called by President Kuchma
following the people's initiative .
The fact that voters are tired with numerous elections can be well illustrated by turnout figures. On
November 14, 1999, 1,056,664 of eligible voters of Zaporizhya took part in the presidential run-off,
and the majority (49.69 percent) supported Communist leader Petro Symonenko. 1,056,852 (69.75
percent) eligible voters of Zaporizhya and the region took part in the April 16 referendum. However,
only about 33 percent of voters came to the polling stations to elect their mayor on June 4, 2000. The
figure allows to expect similarly low voter turnout at the forthcoming by-election in the Zaporizhya
constituency. Therefore, virtually every vote cast for any of the fifteen registered candidates may prove
to be the decisive one.
Another reason for low voter turnout for the recent mayoral elections may be the fact that the notorious
administrative resource was not used in full, for there was no special need to use the non-traditional
method of official influence under the circumstances. The percentage, scored by any of the candidates,
was not as critical as it had been during the April referendum.
The general opinion is that during these elections voters supported, directly or indirectly, candidates
that have something to do with the current authorities and that fit within those authorities' coordinate
system ; being in the same coordinate system is the key criterion for success of a political force, argues
Dr. Volodymyr Polokhalo, Editor-in-Chief of the Politychna Dumka journal (Den, June 14, 2000). This
opinion has proved to be rather accurate at the final stage of elections in Vinnytsya and Mykolayiv, but
the experience of Zaporizhya was quite different. Since voters of Zaporizhya will still have to elect
their MP, we think it would be appropriate to take a closer look at the Zaporizhya local elections
experience.
The mayoral seat in Zaporizhya had been initially claimed by 14 candidates, but two of them stepped
down from the race. On June 4, 2000, voters of Zaporizhya elected police General Oleksandr Polyak as
their mayor. He had been seeking that position since the previous mayoral elections. At that time his
main rival was Oleksandr Holovko, who was finally elected for the position. However, Oleksandr
Polyak and his team challenged the election outcome and finally succeeded in pressuring mayor
Holovko into resignation. Within a few recent months, the mayoral duties had been performed by
acting Mayor Stanislav Selin. He had been seen as a successor to Holovko and also took part in the
recent elections. A peculiar detail about this candidate was the fact that he was supported by
Communists, but even in the traditionally reddish region of Zaporizhya it did not bring the desired
result. The second best result was received by one of Gen. Poliak's main competitor, acting mayor
Stanislav Selin who got 43,795 (21 percent of the votes. The third result belonged to deputy head of the
acting mayor, Vyacheslav Mikhailutsa who received 19,128 or 9% of the votes in Zaporizhya. In fact, a
substantial part of Mr. Poliak's victory can be attributed to local high-ranking officials who weakened
each other during the race, reducing each other's chances to win, and actually freed the way for Poliak.
The explicit support for representatives of the authorities who ran for the mayor's office did a bad
service to the other strongest candidates. According to the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, speaking at
a session of the regional council on April 28, 2000, then head of the Zaporizhya regional state
administration, former First Vice Prime Minister Volodymyr Kuratchenko announced the following:
the administration, its team, every, so to say, level of mechanisms that will be used, [...] we have
chosen Mikhailutsa as out candidate, we will support his [race] for the position of the mayor of
Zaporizhya, [...] we, from the administration, will support that candidate... (www.cvu.kiev.ua).
In the context of the forthcoming by-election, it seems worth noting that Oleksandr Poliak's election
campaign was supported by the Reforms and Order party. Currently the party also supports Oleksandr
Sotnikov, who was number six candidate on the Reforms and Order party's election list for the 1998
parliamentary elections. Currently the former top manager of the AvtoZAZ-Daewoo JV Oleksandr
Sotnikov is deputy head of the Zaporizhya regional state administration and the leader of the Reforms
and Order regional party organization. His chances to be elected to the parliament are estimated at the
most favorable. His main competitor now is Vyacheslav Zubov, chairman of the Supervisory Board of
the Zaporizhya Ferroalloy Plant, a formally non-partisan candidate believed to be provided with
financial and organizational support by the United Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (Ukraina I Svit
Siohodni, June 17, 2000).
Hence, Zaporizhya can be viewed as a specific testing site for political and party races. It is also
noteworthy that the normally active Communist Party of Ukraine did not nominate its own candidate to
run for the Zaporizhya constituency seat. Instead, the Communists back Yaroslav Sukhyi, deputy
director general for social security issues of the Motor-Sich Corporation.
However, in the constituency that strongly supported Communist leader Petro Symonenko a few
months ago, chances of the candidate, backed by Communists, are now viewed as insignificant. This
either means that Communists are losing influence in the region (for which, frankly speaking, there are
no objective reasons), or that they are experiencing a strong shortage of bright personalities, or, which
is the most likely, the Communist leadership is reluctant to compete with strong and powerful political
competitors. All in all, eight Communist candidates will compete for the seats in the parliament on
June 25, but it is still a question whether any of them can actually win.
The city of Mykolayiv has also presented an interesting voting pattern. On June 11, Volodymyr
Chaika, head of the Mykolayiv branch of one of Ukraine's major banks, Ukreximbank, received the
absolute majority of the votes (56.4 percent). The new mayor is fully integrated into the power
coordinates system and the authorities' candidate . Prior to occupying his position as the top bank
manager he changed a number of new nomenklatura jobs: he chaired the regional branch of the state-
owned Pension Fund, led the regional council, and was deputy mayor of Mykolayiv. He was supported
by almost all local branches of state agencies and institutions, and political parties. However, his
absolute victory was slightly shaded by the very low voter turnout: only 23.5 percent of Mykolayiv
voters came to polling stations on that day to elect their mayor. The figure represents a noteworthy
contrast with the voter turnout at the April referendum, when the overwhelming majority (921,240) of
eligible voters of the region participated. It is likely that low voter turnout will be characteristic of the
forthcoming by-elections in one of Mykolayiv region constituencies on June 25.
The second best result at the recent mayoral elections in Mykolayiv (11.4 percent of the votes) was
received by Victor Horbachov, MP, who nowadays combines activity of a member of the parliament
with chairing the regional branch of the newly-establish Working Ukraine party of one of Ukraine's
strongest political-financial alliance of Victor Pinchuk, Igor Sharov and Andriy Derkach. Given the
youth of the political formation, this result can be viewed as good, but it looks obviously insignificant
in the context of the party's ambitions and potential. However, since no candidate of the Working
Ukraine runs for the seat for the Mykolayiv constituency in the forthcoming by-election, it looks like
the party does not consider the region to be a potential stronghold for boosting their political
representation.
The general competition between political parties was well reflected by the recent contest of pretenders
for the mayor's position in Vinnytsya. All in all, 39 candidates had been initially registered for the race,
but only 24 of them arrived to the polling date. Again, the seat was won by a candidate whose
integration in the power structures was the strongest. From the very start of the race for the mayoral
seat the leader was deputy head of the regional state administration Volodymyr Vakhovsky. He was
supported by almost 33 percent of 30 percent of the eligible voters who came to the polling stations on
that day. The Vinnytsya region is seen as one of the strongholds of the former party of power , the
People's Democratic Party (PDP), that backed Vakhovsky's bid for the mayor's seat. On the other hand,
a good result (13 percent) was received by a member of the Socialist party Ivan Bondarchuk, supported
by Communists and the Sobor party, chaired by Anatoly Matvienko, MP, once the leader of the PDP
and now one of the most vehement critics of the regime.
However, the Socialist could not become a strong competitor to the representative of the People's
Democrats, backed by the remarkable administrative resource . Ukrainian Socialists claim that their
candidate's failure was caused by the fact that the necessary result emerges when the votes are counted.
Under ridiculous pretext, heads of local election commissions remove observers from [performing]
control... (Tovarysh, No. 26, June 2000). Their victorious opponents announce that only one complaint
was received by the territorial election commission (Ukraina I Svit Siohodni, June 17, 2000).
Therefore, the claim that the Vinnytsya region has transformed into a reddish area of Ukraine is not
actually accurate.
It is worth noting that in the first round of the recent presidential elections (October 30, 1999), the
region's voters preferred the Socialist leader Oleksandr Moroz, and supported Petro Symonenko in the
second round. Due to that the Vinnytsya region got a title of a red area. However, then the voters voted
against, rather than for a candidate: many of them demonstrated their protest against the appointment of
Dmytro Dvorkis, a rather controversial politician promoted by the United Social Democratic Party of
Ukraine , to the position of head of the city state administration. On June 11 the United Social
Democrats failed dramatically at the mayoral elections. Their candidate, Oleksiy Reva, received only
4.5 percent of the votes. However, the failure did not seem to disappoint the United Social Democrats'
leadership. Commenting on the mayoral election results in Vinnytsya, the party chairman and First
Vice Speaker of the Ukrainian parliament Victor Medvedchuk argued that No failure of the SDPU(o)
representative in the Vinnytsya elections has occurred... Our party did not occupy an active position in
those elections. We understand that a representative of the regional state administration had to win, and
did won in Vinnytsya. That is why we did not interfere in the fight and took part in the race simply
nominally (Den, June 14, 2000).
Hence, the recent mayoral results have demonstrated that low voter turnout become an important
component of the election process. The successful candidates were those who managed to gain support
of the authorities, who are integrated into the power system and who have relevant levers of influence
to try and solve local constituency problems. An important component of the success was a certain set
of local traditions of political preferences and support, like it occurred in Zaporizhya.
Yet, the most dramatic part of the current election season is to be seen on June 25, when the by-election
outcome may cause substantial transformations in the Ukrainian parliament's political schemes.


Elections over...long live elections!

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