Cablegate: Ukrainian Presidential Elections -- On the Road To

VZCZCXRO1200
RR RUEHIK
DE RUEHKV #0231/01 0421116
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 111116Z FEB 10
FM AMEMBASSY KYIV
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 9314
INFO RUCNCIS/CIS COLLECTIVE
RUEHZG/NATO EU COLLECTIVE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 KYIV 000231

SENSITIVE
SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV UP
SUBJECT: UKRAINIAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS -- ON THE ROAD TO
HAPPINESS AND OTHER VIGNETTES

KYIV 00000231 001.2 OF 002

SUMMARY
-------

1. (SBU) Embassy Kyiv election observers throughout Ukraine
were uniformly impressed by the dedication of election
workers and voters. The intensely partisan and mudslinging
conduct of the campaign at the national level was not
reflected in the Precinct Election Commissions (PECs), where
members of both parties cooperated to make the process run
smoothly and transparently. Observers' accounts of the
balloting ranged from the heartwarming to the bizarre;
perhaps the oddest incidents involved the surreptitious use
of disappearing ink in several precincts. End summary.

SO, HOW'RE WE DOING?
--------------------

2. (SBU) Embassy observers were warmly greeted almost
everywhere, with the exception of a few precincts in Odesa,
where the attitude was standoffish or even suspicious.
Generally, Ukrainians understood the importance of
international observation and appreciated the level of
interest in the transparency of their election. In many
places observers were offered food and liquid refreshment by
the Precinct Election Commission (PEC). There were many
questions about how the U.S. conducts balloting -- and
unsolicited offers to come and observe the next American
elections.

3. (SBU) Observers were uniformly impressed by the
seriousness of purpose both of the PECs and of the voters.
Voters braved bitter cold and icy conditions to cast their
ballots, even traveling to precincts by horse-drawn sleigh in
rural areas. Extended families came to the precincts
together, with small children allowed to drop their
grandparents' completed ballots into the box. Some PECs
(composed of eight representatives each from the two major
parties - Yanukovych's Party of Regions and Tymoshenko's
"Bloc Yuliya Tymoshenko") were clearly more efficient and
professional than others. The most striking thing, however,
was the fact that the animosity between the two candidates at
the national level was almost entirely absent in the PECs,
whose members cooperated to make the process smooth and
transparent. Anxious PEC members sometimes sought our
reassurance that they were doing everything correctly; PEC
members, domestic observers, and ordinary voters often asked
how we thought the whole process was going.

4. (SBU) By far the most prosperous precinct visited by the
Ambassador and POLCOUNS was in the bedroom community of
Shchaslyve ("Happy" or "Fortunate") between Kyiv and Boryspil
Airport. The village contained many large homes of
well-to-do Ukrainians. The voting took place in a freshly
painted school, with new chandeliers hanging in the large
room used for voting. The new gymnasium next to the school
was a huge air-inflated dome, with a raucous crowd cheering
on a football match inside. The PEC chairman explained that
the community was indeed doing well, with many residents who
worked in Kyiv and many others at Boryspil Airport.

5. (SBU) One of the most touching moments came in the
Darnytsya District of Kyiv, where a man asked the Ambassador
and POLCOUNS for assistance getting permission for his wife
to vote by mobile ballot box. He explained that he and his
wife had come to the precinct earlier in the morning and that
she had slipped on the ice outside and broken her leg. She
had gone to the hospital, had her leg x-rayed, had been
fitted with a cast, and then went home to rest. She insisted
on voting, however, and sent her husband back to the precinct
to ask that she be allowed to vote by mobile ballot box. The
PEC chairwoman explained that, unfortunately, the rules
required that all mobile ballots be requested no later than
the day before the election. The man would have to go to the
local court to get a ruling on whether his wife would be
allowed to vote. Clearly embarrassed by the "Catch 22"
situation in which she found herself, the PEC chairwoman told
the Ambassador that she had called her District Election
Commission chairman for advice, and that the latter was on
his way to the precinct to sort out the situation. The
Ambassador and POLCOUNS had to leave before the final
decision was made, but both came away impressed with the
determination of at least one Ukrainian woman to do her civic
duty and vote.

NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW YOU DON'T
-----------------------------

6. (U) One of the curiosities of the February 7 runoff
election was the unexplained appearance at several widely

KYIV 00000231 002.2 OF 002

separated precincts of pens with disappearing ink. Ballots
marked with these pens would have the ink vanish a few
moments later, and these ballots would presumably be thrown
out as invalid during the vote count. The working assumption
is that representatives of one party slipped the
disappearing-ink pens into precincts where the other party is
strong, hoping thereby to invalidate hundreds of votes for
the rival candidate.

7. (SBU) Embassy observers were present in a precinct in
Donetsk (Yanukovych's home region, where he received over 90%
of the vote) when a voter brought a disappearing-ink pen to
the PEC's attention. He had stepped into the voting booth,
marked his ballot, bent over to tie his shoe, and when he
stood back up was then astonished to see that his ballot was
blank. He tried the pen on a piece of scrap paper and saw
the mark disappear after a few seconds. PEC workers found
that the pen was the same as all the others on the outside,
but the barrel inside it had been secretly swapped out.
Fortunately, the voting booth with the disappearing-ink pen
was behind a pillar and had not been used extensively, and
the fraud was uncovered relatively early in the day. Several
dozen blank ballots that turned up during the counting
process were declared invalid.

8. (SBU) Evidently the idea of disappearing ink occurred to
both camps. In Bila Tserkva, where Tymoshenko took 69% of
the vote, the problem of disappearing ink was not discovered
at one precinct until the counting stage, when one-quarter of
the ballots turned out to be blank. Embassy observers were
treated to a "Florida 2000" exercise in which grannies on the
PEC held ballots up to the light trying to discern voter
intent from indentations left by the pen with the
disappearing ink. Local observers illuminating ballots with
cigarette lighters barely avoided setting some of them on
fire. Ultimately, the PEC agreed to validate 408 of the
original 469 "blank" ballots.

TECHNICAL VIOLATION - NO CAMPAIGNING IN THE PRECINCT!
--------------------------------------------- --------

9. (SBU) During an election-observation visit to a local
jail, Embassy observers watched as a line of female prisoners
was brought into the voting area, which had been erected in
the hallway of an isolation-cell row. One of the prisoners
was wearing a brand-new blue Yanukovych campaign shirt, which
was strikingly bright and clean compared to the dirty clothes
worn by the other prisoners. The guards led her away to make
her change after the observers noticed her.

WHAT COUNTRY ARE WE IN AGAIN?
-----------------------------

10. (SBU) The PEC Secretary in a Donetsk precinct had a
cellphone with a ringtone that plays the opening bars of the
Soviet national anthem. It kept going off throughout the
vote count - happily, with no apparent effect on the process.
TEFFT

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