In Kirovograd and in other Ukrainian cities, meetings of protest against the election results carried out

According to some reports, in Friday meeting organized by candidates who had lost the election about 4,000 people participated. The meeting’s participants demanded to recognize the election results in 99th district to be invalid. The meeting was organized by the headquarters of Yulia Timoshenko’s bloc, whose candidate Valery Kalchenko had been withdrawn from the election as candidate for people’s deputy and already before the election – as candidate for Korovograd mayor. In the action, members of the Apple party, Our Ukraine bloc participate, as well as representatives of other parties and blocs. The cause of the meeting was the 4 April decision of Korovograd city election committee to recognize as invalid the results of the mayor election. The committee is said to have found some violations during the voting. Among others, there is filling in ballets out of the voting cabins, presence of several people in the cabins at the same time, handing over voting papers without showing documents, too late opening of voting districts, which hindered some voters from voting. It should be noticed, that Mikhail Tsimberevich, who, according to preliminary votes’ calculation, was leading in the mayor election, addressed Friday to the Court of Appeal, asking to regognize the election’s results to be illegal and complaining about the election committee’s activities. According to Tsymbarevich’s election headquarters, the candidate supposes the violations committed in the election to be inessential, which were the reason why the election was recognized invalid. At Friday press-conference in Kiev, leaders of Committee of Ukrainian Voters said that in 99 districts, violations had been registered, which could seriously influence results of the election. In particular, at the very last moment, opposition candidate Valery Kalchenko was withdrawn from the election campaign, some election districts were opened too late etc. In the 99th election districts, today’s deputy Anna Antonyeva won (Democratic Party of Ukraine – Democratic Union pro-presidential bloc), who gathered 16.94 percent of votes. In several days before the election, headquarters of Viktor Yuschenko’s bloc Our Ukraine spread a statement that in Korovograd, 17 thousand of “false” ballets had been found. According to the political coordinator of the bloc, Roman Bessmertny, they received a letter reporting that the additional ballets had been printed for candidate Anna Antonyeva. At the same time, the Central Election Committee got information that in Kirovograd, 70 opened packing with ballets had been found. So, the committee decided to print new ballets for the 99th district. A similar meeting took place in the city of Druzhkovka, Donetsk region, organized by candidates of 51st election district, who consider the elections in the cities of Druzhkovka and Konstantinovka to be illegal. Among the candidates, there are communist and people’s deputy Konstantin Okhrimentko, independent candidate Oleg Solodun, representative of Yulia Timoshenko’s bloc, Irina Timchenko, the candidate of Our Ukraine bloc, Vladimir Grinev and others. In 51st election district, candidate Nikoalai Komar won, the head of Kostantinovka city administration, whose candidacy was proposed by For United Ukraine bloc. According to some information, the functionary fully used so-called administrative resource.

Alexandr Gorobets PRAVDA.Ru Ukraine

Translated by Vera Solovieva

Read the original in Russian: http://www.pravda.ru/main/2002/04/08/39399.html