Ukraine polls 'fixed' - OSCE

2004-11-22 16:30

Kiev - The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe on Monday said Ukraine's crucial runoff presidential vote fell short of international democratic standards and accused the state of fixing the vote.

"The second round of the Ukrainian presidential election does not meet a considerable number of OSCE commitments and Council of Europe and other European standards for democratic elections," said Bruce George, the chief of the OSCE observer mission.

The OSCE criticised the Ukrainian government for requiring some state employees "under duress" to acquire and hand over to their superiors absentee ballots.

Observers have reported that these ballots were collected at the workplace "on an organised basis," George said.

Some people with absentee ballots were transported by bus, he said, while also criticising state-run media coverage of the elections.

"Overt bias in the state-run media continued to favour the prime minister," George told reporters.

With votes counted from 99.14% of polling stations, the pro-Moscow candidate Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich secured 49.42% of the vote, compared with 46.69% of his Western-leaning rival, Viktor Yushchenko.

Another OSCE observer, Geert Ahrens who heads the group's short-term mission, described the vote as a "fraud presidential election" and accused the state of fixing the results.

"There are still too many people who put their personal interests above those of the country," Ahrens said, in reference to the government.

They do not "respect the decision of the sovereign, that is the people of Ukraine," he said.

"It is vitally important in any country that the election of a president should be seen as legitimate."

Democratic norms

In a separate report, the OSCE accused the government of failing to abide to democratic norms.

"Overall, state's executive authorities and the central election commission displayed a lack of will to conduct a genuine democratic election process," the OSCE statement said.

"Despite a number of serious shortcomings being identified (after the first round) the authorities failed to take remedial action to redress bias coverage on state media, misuse of state resources, and pressure on certain categories of voters to support the candidacy of Mister Yanukovich."

Meanwhile, an observer from the parliamentary assembly of Nato, the US-led military alliance which Yushchenko vowed to join should he win the election, said turnout in the pro-Yanukovich Donetsk region seemed suspiciously high.

Turnout in the coal-mining region, where Yanukovich once served as governor, was reported at 96%.

"The turnout in some Donetsk districts are highly unrealistic, especially if one considers that they nearly all gave their support to mister Yanukovich," Nato parliamentary assembly's Lucio Malan told reporters.

- AFP