Politics is not the oldest profession in the world - but it’s certainly the dirtiest and there are few countries that can compete with Ukraine when it comes to barefaced lies, skullduggery and subterfuge. When commentators predicted that the current election campaign might well be the dirtiest ever, it should have set alarm bells ringing. Those predictions have so far proved somewhat pessimistic but not wholly unfounded, and as the campaign approaches the final frenzied three weeks we can expect an escalation in the dirty war being waged in the country’s backstreets, polling stations and court houses.
Another managed election?
So far the election 2007 role of dishonour reads like a textbook example of voter manipulation in a post-Soviet managed democracy. Opposition parties have been denied the chance to register over minor technicalities, manufactured divisions have been engineered in democratic blocs, localised intimidation tactics have been used against opposition activists, apparent disinformation about opposition plans to fix the vote and create disorder has been systematically fed to the media and paid goons have been employed to damage or deface opposition campaign posters. The voters, meanwhile, have been promised huge amounts of money from the government and generally told that all is well.
Against this worrying backdrop the long since dismissed parliament continues to sit in defiance of all legal and constitutional precedent, raising fears that it is already set on a course of headlong collision with any renewed orange coalition following the elections.
It is not all bad, however. News that a grand total of four major court challenges have already been launched against the Central Election Commission is an alarming reflection of the political bias of that particular institution, but the fact that three of these cases have found in favour of the plaintiff is cause for renewed hope in the deeply discredited Ukrainian judiciary.
Likewise the Ukrainian media is currently a ray of democratic sunshine brightening the electoral gloom - news coverage has so far been fairly even-handed with editors literally falling over themselves to make sure everyone gets their share of exposure.
Renewed need for vigilance
This is all a far cry from the last openly manipulated campaign of 2004, when the mass media was a government monopoly and state censorship reached such levels that it helped propel the population out into the streets in their hundreds of thousands. Nor will we ever witness vote-rigging as brazen as the coach convoys of Donbass multi-voters and 100% pro-government home votes of 2004.
The danger now is that with power in Ukraine currently split on a regional level between a number of political forces and all the leading parties able to call upon the kind of administrative resources that make mass falsification possible, we could be about to see democracy undermined by widespread cynicism and popular rejection just as it is starting to take root.
The only defence against this threat is eternal vigilance on the part of the individual political parties, pro-democracy activists and the country’s independent media.
Civil society on the front line
Back in 2004 the unrelenting glare of the international media spotlight did much to force the authorities to back down and effectively disown their own efforts to steal the presidential vote, paving the way for Ukraine’s great democratic breakthrough.
In the intervening years the international appetite for democracy-building has waned significantly, but luckily the country can call upon an army of civil society volunteers who received their baptisms of fire in the run-up to the Orange Revolution or earned their spurs fighting for democracy throughout the long, dark years of the Kuchma regime. This committed and growing section of society can be relied upon to provide excellent election observation teams and support the rights of individual Ukrainians who find themselves inexplicably removed from voter lists or otherwise disenfranchised come September 30.
Ukraine can also count on a battalion of international observers for the coming parliamentary vote, but ultimately the survival of the country’s democracy cannot be safeguarded by foreign intervention alone, and as well as civil society enthusiasts the process requires the support of the rival political clans if it is to succeed.
Putting faith in party politics
In theory Ukraine’s well-established political parties will serve to safeguard each other’s electoral rights via a process of mutual monitoring, so the country’s democratic system should come though this latest test relatively unscathed and perhaps stronger than ever, despite the bumpy ride.
However, fears remain that some of the parties participating have no real commitment to the democratic process and see their interests as best served by deliberate attempts to sabotage it once the day of the big vote arrives. If such allegations are proved accurate, then the pro-democracy sentiment of the Ukrainian people will be put to its most severe test yet.
