Ukrainian parliamentary by-elections held on July 17 in seven constituencies met democratic standards despite there being some violations, election watchdogs have said.
The backstage winners of the election are oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky and Batkivshchyna party leader Yulia Tymoshenko – each of them getting two new representatives in parliament.
The seven seats across the country became vacant after the lawmakers elected in these districts switched to positions in the Cabinet of Ministers or were elected as city mayors in the local elections of 2015. In Volyn Oblast, the elected lawmaker, businessman Ihor Yeremeyev, was killed in a horse-riding accident in 2015.
But Oleksiy Koshel, head of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, criticized the election campaign, saying it was “meaningless.”
“The elections once again highlighted the need for full electoral reform,” he told the Kyiv Post.
Such a reform, he said, must limit political advertising and cancel the single-member district election through which half of the parliament is now elected, and leave only a general election in which parties participate.
Meet the winners
In Dnipro, independent Tetiana Rychkova won the seat in parliament (44 percent of the votes). Before 2014, Rychkova used to run a business, but when Russia started its war against Ukraine in Donbas, she dedicated herself to raising money to buy army supplies. She was later hired by the Defense Ministry.
Rychkova was endorsed by the previous representative of this constituency, Borys Filatov, who was elected as Dnipro’s mayor in October.
In Volyn Oblast, Iryna Konstankevych won with the highest result of the election – 57 percent of the vote. Konstankevych represents Ukrop – a party started in Dnipro by associates of oligarch Kolomoisky. Prior to the election, Konstankevych used to work as deputy head of a charity fund of Ihor Palytsya, Kolomoisky’s ally.
Another representative of Ukrop is just ahead in the vote in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast. Viktor Shevchenko is the director of Bugil – a company based in Yaremche that apparently owns skiing infrastructure. Local media reported that Shevchenko is the brother of Oleksandr Shevchenko, the director of the Bukovel Ski Resort, which is owned by Kolomoisky.
Representatives of Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna party won two seats, meaning that the opposition faction will grow to 21 members in the Rada.
Batkivshchyna representative Ruslan Bogdan won in Poltava Oblast and Yuriy Odarchenko in Kherson Oblast. Odarchenko, a Kherson businessman, won 25 percent of the vote, ahead of the scandalous ex-head of the drug-fighting police Illya Kiva and representatives of all the major parties.
In Chernihiv, hopes of re-election were dashed for Yehor Firsov, who was expelled from parliament for criticizing his old faction – the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko. Firsov tried to regain his seat and ran independently in Chernihiv, but lost to Maksym Mykytas, the owner of a construction company, who is close to the presidential team. With the count 97 percent complete, Firsov has only 4 percent of the vote, while Mykytas is winning with 31 percent.
Serhiy Shahov, the candidate from Our Land (Nash Kray), a party seen by many observers as close to the presidential administration, won in a constituency in Luhansk Oblast.
Dirty elections
Numerous violations were recorded during the campaign and on election day.
The vote count was obstructed in constituency No. 114 in Luhansk Oblast. Most of the members of the local election committee left the office, making it impossible for the committee to accept the voting bulletins for the count. The representatives of Opora election watchdog suggested that the committee members faced pressure from the candidates and declared the incident an attempt to disrupt the election.
Violations were recorded in other districts, too.
According to the Committee of Voters, candidates were giving unrealistic promises, such as increasing salaries by three times, as well as pledging to provide things that are beyond the power of lawmakers – such as road repairs.
