Friday, November 09, 2012

Opposition candidates in disputed constituencies will continue to fight despite Azarov's offer

PM Azarov, in an official statement on the government site, has just said:

"The Government is seriously concerned about the situation which arose regarding the counting of votes in the elections to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine in some single member districts.

As Prime Minister of Ukraine I've repeatedly spoken out about this.

Meanwhile, succession of events encourages us to officially call upon political parties and candidates, who're caught up in conflicts of counting votes, to stop these conflicts and to start a dialogue with each other."

I watched several opposition candidates from the 13 disputed single mandate constituencies as they were interviewed on Thursday's Mykola Knyazhytsky show on TVi. What struck me was their quiet dignity, intelligence and determination.

The stories they told were all very similar. The 'protocols' resulting from parallel vote counting at the lowest level were generally satisfactory [primarily because when these votes were 'totted up' at polling stations there was little chance of knowing for sure how the vote was going overall in the constituencies.] These protocols are in the public domain.

But once the protocols together with voting slips were delivered to constituency electoral commissions and it quickly became clear from the numbers on the protocols that bad news awaited the pro-authority candidates, the 'funny business' started. This took the form of power cuts and black-outs inside the building, unnecessary 'time-outs' and delaying tactics by the counters, seizure of votes in back-rooms by unknown persons of 'sporting appearance', tampering of bags containing the votes, and so on.

Most of these opposition candidates on the tv show were academics, doctors, bosses of small to medium businesses etc. They were standing against very prominent multi-millionaire businessmen who, in many cases, employ hundreds of persons [including security staff ]in the areas where they were standing for election...

These high-power businessmen say in self-justification of their criminal behaviour: 'Look, I have grown my business here and brought hundreds of jobs...what have these opposition candidates brought, what can they do for you?' As if this gives them the right to cheat...

Encouragingly the opposition candidates who considered they were cheated, declared they will continue their fight for justice using the enormous amount of evidence they have accumulated for as long as necessary. They complained however, that the dozens of law suits already put before judges challenging results, have all been, so far, treated with contempt and ignored.

p.s Yevheniya Tymoshenko on British Channel 4 TV interview here

3 comments:

elmer said...

You are absolutely right about Knyazhytsky's program.

What is particularly astounding is that the vote margins that were ultimately falsified were not small.

The vote tallying at the initial level revealed opposition wins by margins of 4,000 or 3,000 votes.

This was in the single-mandate, majority vote districts.

Yet, when the tallies were posted at the Central Election Commission, they showed - narrow - victories by the pro-PoR or PoR candidates.

The winners that appeared on that TVi show pretty much had the same story - massive vote fraud on the part of the sovok mafia authorities, nullifying thousands, not hundreds, of votes.

elmer said...

It's not just the elections.

It's also the "beneficent oilgarchs" who keep their offices by virtue of spreading money around - "building churches," etc.

It's not just the elections - it's also the system.

Here is yet another concrete example involving Tetyana Zasucha (Татяна Засука), who is a pro-POR candidate who lost at the local level by a significant amount of votes, but then was declared "the winner" by the Central Election Commission.

The comments about her at Ukrainian Pravda are not kind, including references to Planet of the Apes.

It turns out that she has a company town all to herself and her husband - Kovalivka. The voter turnout was - you guessed it - over 90% in that company town. The welcome sign to the town says it's the "Town of Your Dreams." Uganda and Russia have 90% turnouts.

Voter turnout was kept track of very tightly, to make sure people turned out. She and her husband have their company there, and "it was her dream to make a nice town for everyone" - meaning herself.

As soon as journalists showed up, there were greeted by --- guards ---- who questioned the journalists' right to film anything - just like in sovok times.

First, she and her husband accumulate funds via shady shenanigans in government. Then, they keep their wealth - via government - by spreading a little bit of it around.

Here's the video (link is in the middle of the page):



http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2012/11/9/6977156/


It sort of reminds you of the old Tennessee Ernie Ford song, "16 tons" about coal-miners in a company town:

You load 16 tons and what do you get,
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Joo90ZWrUkU

In Zookraine - company towns.

That's how it workds. One big company town owned by the sovok mafia thugs from the Party of Regions.

The thing that's missing in Zookraine:

"if you see me coming better step aside
a lot of men didn't, a lot of men died
one fist of iron, the other of steel,
if the left one don't get you, then the right one will"

Eliminate the Party of Regions, and eliminate the criminocracy oligarch system in Zookraine

elmer said...

Here's some interesting analysis, as it stands now:

The Party of Regions needs 41 votes in order to gain a majority of 226 in parliament.

Also - the commies gained their seats solely under party list voting - not a single seat under the single-mandate election district majority vote.


So -

Party of Regions - 185 seats

Fatherland (United Opposition, Yatseniuk, Tymoshenko, Lutsenko) --- 101


Freedom (Svoboda) ----- 37


Punch (Klithcko's UDAR party) -- 40


Commies - 32


43 independents/self-nominated


United Center (Viktor Baloha and his brother, plus a cousin) - 3


National Party (current speaker Lytvyn plus one more) ----- 2


Union --- 1

Radical Party (Lyashko) -- 1



http://tvi.ua/partii_regioniv_brakue_40_tushok_dlya_bilshosti