Votes in Ukraine being counted up

Preliminary results declared by the Central Election Committee have determined the leaders of the parliament election. At 10.00 (Kiev time), Viktor Yuschenko’s bloc is leading. The Our Ukraine bloc has won 20.23 percent of the vote; the second place belongs to the Communist Party with 20.21 percent; the third goes to the For United Ukraine bloc (15.41 percent); the Socialist Party has 8.1 percent of vote; Yulia Timoshenko’s bloc has 6.06 percent; the Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (united) has 5.77 percent. The data of the Central Election Committee differ from those of the exit poll, which still cannot be explained by Ukrainian political science professors and politicians.

Some presse conferences that were planned for this morning were abolished cancelled by the parties because of the slow calculation of the votes. The chairman of the Central Election Committee, Mikhail Ryabets, explains the slow arrival of the results from the district commissions with the difficult procedure for the calculation of the votes, which corresponds with the law about the election of people’s deputies. He recalled that, according to the procedure, one of the members of the Election Committee had to “read aloud every ballot like the Bible, while the others look at him,” Interfax-Ukraina quotes M.Ryabets.

The observers say that they have noticed some violations during the election. For example, many election commissions turned out to be unprepared for such a flow of the voters, and the voting was not secret. In the Kharkov region, some unknown persons attacked a Helsinki Human Rights Group observer, British citizen Chad Nail, and people’s deputy (and candidate in this election) Vladimir Filenko. Some other violations were also registered, which will probably cause a whole wave of suits. However, the Central Election Committee’s chairman Mikhail Ryabets believes that the election took place and it cannot be declared invalid.

Andrei Lubenski PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Vera Solovieva

Read the original in Russian: http://www.pravda.ru/main/2002/04/01/39071.html