Abuse of administrative resources is not a major factor

Ukraine’s Committee of Voters [CVU] today published its 5th monitoring bulletin which concludes that overt abuse such as public officials exerting pressure on voters is not evident.

CVU considers the greatest problem with regard to the use of administrative resource in these elections to be the fact that some public officials are combining their official duties with activities either as heads of electoral commissions or as candidates for National Deputy. This leads to the use of State resources being used for election campaigning, by the political factions represented.

The Committee mentions that there have been cases where public officials have unlawfully obstructed the election campaign.

It welcomes however the lack of any recorded cases where additional money “for the elections” has been collected by fiscal or other controlling bodies. However, money for the campaign has been provided by powerful Ukrainian and foreign financial and industrial groups.  The possibility cannot be excluded that in exchange these groups have received guarantees of support for their business interests.

During these elections, the role of the courts has increased substantially. Given the shortcomings in electoral procedures and biased rulings by electoral commissions, court rulings become definitive in running the campaign. CVU has been receiving ever increasing information, as yet unverified, regarding attempts to bribe the courts examining electoral disputes.

The Committee expresses particular concern at the possibility of law enforcement personnel being drawn into the election campaign given that their managers are on the candidate lists of various political factions.

a brief outlet of the latest monitoring report published at: www.cvu.org.ua