Quite for a long time Odesa oblast organization All-Ukrainian nongovernmental civic organization Committee of voters of Ukraine is monitoring the preparation to the elections of People's Deputies of Ukraine, which will take place on October 28, 2012. In this article you will find out about the interesting facts, which were recorded during the campaign on the territory of Odesa region, and about the possible problems of this campaign.
First of all, we should underline the fact that the political parties and potential candidates for the People's Deputies definitely started their campaigns long before it has been officially opened. It resulted in so called agitation false start.
During May-July 2012 the electioneering in Odesa oblast had a number of peculiarities. The most actively the campaign was conducted in the south and in the center of oblast, including Odesa city. In comparison with the parties (future subject of the election process), the potential candidates in the single mandate districts were more active.
The party of Regions and Ukraine -Ahead! party were the most active in electioneering. The Front of Change, All-Ukrainian Union Fatherland, the Communist Party of Ukraine, and the UDAR party were less active. During their campaign they were using the following tools: external advertising, agitation in mass media, meetings with voters, mass events, and distribution of material values (usually free of charge) among the voters, institutions, and organizations.
The interesting features of the campaigns of different political powers (except of traditional mass events, distribution of leaflets and newspapers, use of billboards and citylights) should be discussed separately. Thus, the Party of Regions has organized a meeting with the voters within the framework of People's budget and People's medical examination projects. (The first one includes the meetings with the members of territorial communities, during which the decisions on distribution of funds of the local budget on development are made; the second is a prophylactic medical examination of the population.) Although both projects are financed from the budget, they are accompanied by the party symbols and agitation material. In the rural area the communists launched the activity of mobile agitation brigades. In the middle of month theUkraine-Ahead! party started the "people's primaries" of their candidates. The United opposition put emphasize on the conducting of the big number of press conferences.
However, the potential majoritarian candidates were electioneering much more actively. In addition, it was they whose agitation was noticed earlier than it is stipulated by law. The meetings with voters, placement of billboards on the occasion of different state and professional holidays and commemorative dates, and also public speeches on the TV, printed and Internet media were used to create a positive image and to conduct hidden or open agitation. In Odesa the candidates also tried to use the local problems to increase their popularity, namely, they were "fighting" for the free access to the city beaches.
The candidates from the Party of Regions, in order to create a positive image, were using the projects of People's budget and People's medical examination and were collecting the signatures "in favor of Russian language". Some candidates (e.g. Yurii Presnov, Oleksandr Presman, Hennadii Trukhanov) tried to use in their campaign the issues of summer holidays and children's health improvement. Two more candidates from the Party of Regions Yurii Presnov (voting district #133) and Mykhailo Yatskov (district #140) were placing their advertising material in the local buses.
In the voting district #133 Ihor Markov (RODYNA) and Oleksii Honcharenko (Party of Regions) started the "war of billboards", on which they put the results of the opinion polls in favor of their candidacy.
Separately we should mention the fact that the electioneering by distribution of material values or services among the voters has spread almost in all constituencies of the oblast. Although such practice has the features of the direct vote buying, which is forbidden by the law on elections and by the resolution of the Central Election Commission #76, this form of agitation was not followed by any legal responsibility because it was conducted before the official start of the election process.
In general, the charitable activity of the potential candidates, which has the features of vote buying, became a trend of the campaign in the single mandate districts. The politicians create charity funds, which mainly work on the territory of one constituency, and popularize their activity in the local media.
Unfortunately, in the region it became widespread practice to involve the officials of state and local governments into the campaign of parties and potential candidates. First of all, here we talk about the actions within the framework of People's budget and People's medical examination, which are financed from the budget. However, these projects are accompanied by pronounced agitation for the Party of Regions. The state officials, employees of state and local bodies of government are actively involved in the activity of these projects.
Besides this, the information about the complaints of employees of the budget sphere and the heads of village councils appears more and more frequently in the media. They inform about the pressure from the heads of the higher level in favor of the Party of Regions. It was reported that one of the heads of Ananiv rayon gathered the heads of the villages and tried to force them to join the Party of Regions. On June 19, during the doctor's meeting, the chief physician of Kiliia rayon was persuading the participant to vote for the Party of Regions and to make their families and patients follow their example. The voting for other parties or candidates was forbidden.
The instances of disturbance of political agitation of the potential subjects of the election process were noticed. Thus, in the urban-type settlement Tarutyne, Odesa oblast, according to the decision of the village council the advertisement hoarding, which was rented by the potential oppositional candidate for the people's deputy Oleksandr Borniakov (Oblast Council Deputy fromYulia Tymoshenko Bloc) was confiscated, because in future "it will contain the information of oblast council".
Something similar happened in Artsyz, on the eve of the visit of Oblast Governor. Then, according to the instructions of the rayon authorities, the billboard of the United opposition was covered with congratulations on the Constitution Day. As reported by Ihor Lado, the Head of rayon organization of the Front of Change, previously he has already received the phone calls with the "friendly" requests to remove anti-Ukrianian billboards.
Moreover, the billboards of the Communist Party of Ukraine near Odesa and of the United opposition near Izmail city were damaged. In both cases, resorts to the police with the requests to find the vandals were unsuccessful.
Another unpleasant incident took place in Izmail. On July 18 the Mayor of Izmail Andrii Abramchenko denied the request of Serhii Soboliev, the People's Deputy from the opposition, for the city palace of culture, which was needed to conduct a meeting with the voters. He motivated his denial by saying that "the technical personnel of the palace of culture is on holidays", thus, it is impossible to provide the appropriate functioning of the building during the meeting of the People's Deputy. However, according to the observations of our activists, during that time the palace of culture was functioning in a usual mode.
Another problem is recorded instances of the use of "black PR" as a tool of agitation against certain potential candidates. The biggest amount of such cases was noticed in Odesa city (voting district # 11, Kyiv rayon) and in voting district #143 (with center in Izmail city). These materials present information, which discredits the candidates as politicians and which is supposed to create a negative image of these candidates among the voters. Usually the information in such leaflets is not corroborated and sometimes goes from the first person.
Thus, the election campaign in Odesa region was quite active long before the official start of the election process. It gives us the grounds to argue that in the near future we will be the witnesses of even more critical and interesting election struggle. In turn, Odesa oblast organization All-Ukrainian nongovernmental civic organization Committee of voters of Ukraine will continue to inform you about the main tendencies and the most interesting facts of this process.
Reference:
Civic monitoring conducted by OPORA - is a type of network activity, aimed at impartial assessment of the preparation and conduct of elections, as well as preventing violations through comprehensive civic action. Professional monitoring at all stages of the election process indirectly influences the quality of the campaign. The public opinion, both foreign and domestic is formed through gathering and spreading of information among the target audience. From a strategic perspective public monitoring of elections focuses upon improving the system and certain procedures. In 2012, during Parliamentary elections in Ukraine OPORA implements a large-scale campaign of long- and short term observation, organizes a statistical vote-count by the results of voting with the proportional component of the electoral system on a basis of representative selection, will provide 100% coverage of polling stations by observers in separate single-mandate majoritarian districts. OPORA observers will work in all 225 electoral districts, and 3,500 activists will join them on the voting day. Organization will use the latest means of spreading information on observation results, including infographics and interactive maps.