UKRAINE: RADA ELECTION TALLY AT 83 PERCENT; KIEV

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 KIEV 001194

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/28/2016
TAGS: PGOV PINR KDEM RU
SUBJECT: UKRAINE: RADA ELECTION TALLY AT 83 PERCENT; KIEV
MAYORAL ELECTION LOOKING AT UPSET


Classified By: Ambassador for reasons 1.4(a,b,d).


1. (C) Summary: Official results continued to come in slowly
but steadily through the day March 28, with relative
percentages holding steady at Yanukovych 30, Tymoshenko 22
and Our Ukraine 15. Most parties have not voiced any
significant complaints about the election, but Tymoshenko's
bloc continues to question the results in Donetsk since
observers were not provided results protocols, and the
Committee of Voters of Ukraine reported one instance of vote
padding in Donetsk. Also, some sporadic reports from
precinct commissions of efforts in the district commission to
manipulate votes have surfaced. Nevertheless, the Central
Election Commission is posting results for individual
precints for the first time this year, which allows observers
to confirm that precinct results were recorded centrally as
they were tallied locally. Kiev's mayoral race is shaping up
to be a major upset, with opposition candidate Chernovetskyy
in the lead with 96 percent of the vote counted. Preliminary
results in the races for Kiev City and Oblasts Radas
(councils) indicate a strong showing for Orange parties, with
Tymoshenko's bloc well in the lead, which should give reform
parties comfortable majorities. End summary.

Official Results
--------------

2. (U) CEC official results continued to come slowly
throughout the day March 28. With 83.40 percent of precincts
reporting at 6:00 pm, the official votes tally stood at:

Regions 30.59 percent
Tymoshenko 22.40
Our Ukraine 15.01
Socialists 6.04
Communists 3.61
-------------- 3% threshold --------------
Vitrenko 2.62
Lytvyn 2.49
Kostenko-Plyushch 2.07
Viche 1.59
PORA-PRP 1.48

Reported Election Problems
--------------

3. (U) Editor of the Donetsk novini.dn.ua website Oleksiy
Matsuka alleged that some polling stations were intentionally
delaying results of the vote count until observers fell
askeep or left. As of 10 pm on March 27 only 6 out of 40
polling stations in Voroshylovskyy district in Donetsk
submitted protocols to district election commissions. He
suspected this delay was someone's attempt to modify the
results when observers were no longer present to verify the
accuracy of protocols. He reported that the results
submitted by one polling station to district election
commission were slightly modified (100 votes) in favor of
Regions. The Committee of Voters of Donetsk also reported
that in two polling stations its observers were denied
protocols; polling station members said their unillingness to
issue more protocols for observers was because of fatigue.
(Note: Large numbers of observers were present at most
polling stations, and producing signed copies of the
protocols for them does take additional time. The CEC
website is posting results for individual polling stations
this year, so observers who witnessed the counts should be
able to verify whether they were reported properly.)


4. (SBU) One of the OSCE/ODIHR long-term observers (LTOs) in
Luhansk Oblast indicated that extremely long vote counts and
error-ridden protocols were the norm there. The LTO
attributed this to overworked, exhausted polling station
commission (PSC) workers making arithmetic errors while
preparing the protocols. According to the LTO, many PSCs
were taking their protocols to their District Election
Commission (DEC) and having them refused because of numerous
errors. The CEC website indicated Luhansk Oblast had one of
the lower percentages of protocols reported in as of 6 pm
March 28 at 66%.


5. (SBU) Late in the day a couple of commissioners from PSC
110 in TEC 218, Shevchenko district, Kiev, showed up at the
Embassy alleging that they had been pressured to change the
local election results of their PSC. The commissioners told
us that when they packaged the ballots and took their
protocol to the TEC (Territorial Election Commission, that
gathers and records local election results),the TEC refused
to receive the results and told them they needed to change
the number of registered voters on their protocol by around
2-300 people. The TEC staffers also said that they would
also had to change figures on the other pages of the
protocol. The commissioners refused, and went to see the TEC
chairperson who said they should do what the TEC staffers
requested. The TEC staffers threatened that they would be
sent to jail if they did not change the protocol. The PSC
commissioners made a complaint at the district prosecutor's
office, but the prosecutors office would not accept the
complaint because, they said, it was illegible. The
commissioners refused to re-write it, citing that they had
been awake more than 72 hours. The two planned to go next to
the municipal prosecutor. The PSC commissioners said they
thought this might be happening at other PSCs in Shevchenko
district. (Note: This episode relates only to the local
election results. Other people from this PSC were in line at
the DEC, waiting to deliver the parliamentary results for
their PSC.)

Kiev City Election
--------------


6. (U) In a major upset, official results of the Kiev mayoral
election with 96.63 percent of the vote counted at 6 pm
continued to show Our Ukraine member Chernovetskyy in the
lead with 31.18 percent of the vote, followed by Klychko with
23.21 percent and Omelchenko with only 20.82 percent,
according to the Pora-PRP website. The CEC chairman
complained during the day that mayoral election results were
coming in before parliamentary results, contrary to the rule
that parliamentary should be counted first; mid-day
parliamentary returns from Kiev were only about 72 percent
reported while the Kiev city vote count was over 90 percent
reported. In a press conference last night, Klychko called
Chernovetskyy the victor.


7. (U) In the Kiev City Rada election, Tymoshenko's BYuT was
strongly in the lead at 6pm with 94.41 percent of the vote
counted (also as reported on the Pora-PRP website):

BYuT 23.97 percent
OU 8.70
PORA-PRP 8.33
Regions 5.72
Kiev People's Aktyv 3.96
Socialists 3.84
Lytvyn Bloc 3.58
--------------
European Capitol 2.31
Kostenko-Plyushch 1.65

(Note: Hromadskyy Aktyv Kyyeva (HAK): "Aktyv" is a
Soviet-era word for the nomenklatura or leadership that does
not translate well. The HAK bloc is headed by former Our
Ukraine member Oleksandr Pabat, who left OU in December 2005.
The group appears to have a young leadership and claims to
represent a coalition of civic organizations. Word on the
street is that the bloc is financed by someone close to BYuT.
HAK was active long before the election in distributing
information to the public about Ukrainian laws and voting
rights, and its major slogan is that the Kiev city council
should represent Kiev citizens not policial parties; it does
not advertise the fact that it actually formed on the basis
of three small parties (note: NGOs legally cannot nominate
candidates). Its platform includes equal access to
universities, based on objective evaluations of academic
performance, and other reforms.

If these percentages hold, a Tymoshenko-Our Ukraine coalition
could control about 68 of the 120 seats on the city Rada, and
Pora another 17 (Bondarenko evidently misrepresented the
council composition at 90, reported reftel; it recently
increased).

Bio Note
--------------

8. (U) Leonid Chernovetskyy was born in Kharkiv in 1951.
After the mandatory army service (he served in the internal
forces as a prison guard),Chernovetskyy graduated from
Kharkiv Institute of Law. In 1977, he started working as a
investigator and then senior official in the Kiev
prosecutor's office. Some time later he started teaching at
the Criminal law department of Kiev Shevchenko University.
Since 1990, he has headed the Praveks concern, which includes
Praveks Bank (one of Ukraine's largest) and several insurance
and legal consulting businesses.


9. (U) Chernovetskyy was elected to the Rada three times.
His political career started when he set up the "For a
Beautiful Ukraine" party in the early nineties. The party
later became one of the founders of the Party of Regions. In
1998, Chernovetskyy belonged to the pro-Kuchma NDP. Some
time after the 2002 elections, Chenovetskyy joined
Yushchenko's Our Ukraine, leading Oleksandr Omelchenko's son
to leave the faction in protest. Chernovetskyy served as
Yushchenko's presidential advisor.


10. (SBU) Chernovetskyy is eccentric. He is associated with
the God's Embassy church and is the chairman of the Christian
Liberal Party of Ukraine. The website Criminal Ukraine (at
that time owned by investigative journalist Oleh Yeltsov)
wrote in 2003 that under cover of the Church, Chernovetskyy
and the Church's bishop Sunday Adeladja were involved in drug
trafficking. In April 2003 a Mercedes that belonged to
Praveks bank ran over a boy, and Chernovetskyy was said to
have been behind the wheel at the time, but the case never
went anywhere.


11. (U) Visit Embassy Kiev's classified website:
www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/kiev.
Herbst