Luc MICHEL for EODE Think Tank /
With EODE Mission in Ukraine (1) – AFP – Worldwide News Ukraine – Liberation – RIA Novosti – Deutsche Welle – Russia Today – Stratfor – Kommersant-Ukraine – La Libre Belgique – Rossiyskaya Gazeta – Reuters / 2012 11 05 /
* Again, as in Russia in December 2011 and March 2012, the OSCE observers, linked to NATO and the EU, are in stark contrast to the observations of independent monitoring missions.
* The Ukrainian elections are a pretext for new Western destabilization operation and direct support to parties associated with NATO.
* The missions of independent and non-aligned monitoring, practicing scientific monitoring, claim elections generally free and fair.
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STATISTICAL, POLITICAL AND LEGAL DATA OF THE ORGANIZATION OF THE UKRAINIAN PARLIAMENTARY ELECTION
Ukrainian parliamentary elections were held on 28 October 2012. Voters went to nearly 34,000 polling stations throughout the country and abroad to vote, through two lists, for one of the 87 political parties contesting the Parliament and a candidate of single district they support. This is the first election since the return to power of President Yanukovych in 2010, "an election seen as a test by the European Union, as relations between Brussels and Kiev have cooled since the imprisonment of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, in August 2011”. Yulia Tymoshenko, former Ukrainian oligarch who made her fortune in the field of gas – was nicknamed the "gazprincess" there – was convicted of abuse of power by the Ukrainian courts. This is the darling of the West and NATO and the former muse of the pro-Western coup d'état of 2004, the famous "orange revolution" of Western media.
The 2012 elections are regulated by the new electoral law passed by Parliament in November 2011. The bill reintroduced the mixed electoral system in Ukraine. Now, 225 members of the Ukrainian Parliament will be elected via party lists and 225 members through single-member constituencies. The threshold for admission to Parliament is 5%. Another innovation is the installation of webcams in each polling station. These devices will broadcast the signal live.
Note that the use of webcams was initiated during the Russian Duma elections of December 2012 in the district of Novosibirsk (with major cities of Novosibirsk – 1.5 million people – and Kemerovo), in Siberia. District monitored by one of the Missions of EODE in these elections, I was leading. We recommended (the publication of recommendations is part of the work of our missions) the widespread use of these webcams, permanently connected and displayed on multiple screens in the premises of the regional electoral commissions. A recommendation adopted and generalized in the Russian presidential election in March 2012. Which obviously prevents fraud.
NEAR 4,000 OBSERVERS FROM 28 COUNTRIES AND 130,000 UKRAINIAN OBSERVERS MONITORED THE PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS IN UKRAINE
On October 22, the Central Election Committee of Ukraine has reported the final number of 666 international observers registered for the parliamentary elections in Ukraine on 28 October. The total number of foreign observers reached 3797 people – not all having the legal status of registered "international observers", but admitted to the electoral process, the difference between the two categories according to their criteria for registration – representing 28 countries and 35 international non-governmental organization. Among them EODE (Eurasian Observatory for Democracy & Elections) and our partners ECGA and ICES. In addition, more than 130,000 domestic observers were also involved in the elections.
Note the massive presence of domestic observers hostile to the government. So LIBERATION (Paris) presents OPORA like this: "In the small office of the organization Opora – an NGO, which will observe the smooth running of parliamentary elections on Sunday – in the heart of a residential area of Kiev they complete packages to tape that will soon be sent throughout Ukraine. " "These are meters that enable our 3,500 observers to identify constituents that arise in the polls, says Olha Aivazovska, a member of the NGO. We will monitor the elections very closely, as we have since the beginning of the campaign. "
The Ukrainian parliamentary elections attracted increased international attention, including organizations such as the OSCE and the European Parliament (EP) who sent observation missions in the country. "Observers are only looking at the process," said Michael Gahler MEP who also observed the Ukrainian elections, during an interview with the DEUTSCHE WELLE. He said before the election that "in case of violation of the electoral process, an observer would record the facts in the report without interfering with this process." "The EP observers will pay particular attention to the fact that Ukrainians have the opportunity to exercise their right to vote and the counting of votes is transparent," he also said.
These observers attended in short and long-term the Ukrainian elections. Some long-term observers – of independent NGOs – monitor media and produce reports in Ukraine since September 2012 and have already published their preliminary findings. They concluded that "competitiveness of the electoral process in Ukraine and the lack of clear leadership." "Therefore, the elections correspond so far with the principles of democracy, despite some identified violations." What we call "technical problems" not likely to jeopardize the final result.
A SUMMARY OF THE RESULTS OF THE ELECTIONS
The PARTY OF THE REGIONS, party of the head of state, topped and should be able to form a majority, despite the breakthrough of neo-fascist nationalists of SVOBODA (pro-NATO) and the party set up by the boxer Vitali Klitschko and the alliance of these two formations with the pro-Western Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko.
The party of President Viktor Yanukovych arrives thus at the head of the elections, followed by the opposition alliance close to the imprisoned former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko in an election where the boxer Vitali Klitschko and nationalist neo-fascists "have created the surprise" according to the Western media. But where are actually the Communists of the UCP – a party of national-communist type close to the Russian KPFR of Zouganov and radically anti NATO – who are the real emerging political force.
According to official results for the seats allocated by proportional representation (225 out of 450), the PARTY OF REGIONS won 37% of votes, followed by the opposition alliance BATKIVCHTCHINA of Yulia Tymoshenko (21%) and the Communists (15%). The opposition party UDAR of the famous boxer Vitali Klitschko has won 13% and the nationalist formation SVOBODA (stemming from the anti-Russian camp nostalgic of Ukrainian fascism of Bendera) 7%. The party of star footballer Andriy Shevchenko got only 1.7% of the vote, far to cross the electoral threshold of 5% to enter Parliament, according to the figures announced by the Central Electoral Commission.
The other half of the 450 Deputies is elected by uninominal majority vote.
With this mode of election, the Party of Regions gets to receive 114 seats against 40 for the alliance BATKIVCHTCHINA of Yulia Tymoshenko, 9 for SVOBODA and 5 for UDAR. The other 57 seats should be distributed between the Communists of the UCP and several smaller parties and independent candidates.
WHO ARE THE "NATIONALIST" UKRAINIANS?
One should stop on SVOBODA. Called "nationalist" by the Western media – the fallacious term used cynically when the neo-fascist far right is useful to NATO in the East or the Arab countries – it is in fact radical neo-fascist, xenophobic (anti-Russian and anti-Polish) and openly anti-Semitic. Their leader Oleg is well known for his virulently anti-Semitic speech (2). In 2004, he glorified Ukrainian Kollabos for their collaboration with the Nazis and called to continue their struggle against the Russians and Jews.
Tyagnobok is a former member of OUR UKRAINE, an electoral coalition of Ukrainian parties of right and extreme right-founded in 2002. This is the political party of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko. Among the formations grouped in OUR UKRAINE, in January 2002, the CONGRESS OF NATIONALIST UKRAINIANS, "a Ukrainian political party that is part of the Alliance for Europe of the Nations."
OUR UKRAINE is also supported by many neo-fascist factions, gangs of skinheads, and clubs of nostalgics of the Nazi collaboration, supporters of Bendera and OUN and UPA parties (3), or the clubs of the former Ukrainian divisions of the Waffen SS "Galizien" (Halitchina in Ukrainian or Galitchina).
All these groups provide the shock troops of the "Orange Revolution" in 2004 and battalions PORA, the Ukrainian branch of the International Network OTPOR-CANVAS, funded by the U.S..
For those who still have doubts about the real nature, far right, anti-Semitic and neo-fascist of the hooligans of PORA and shock troops of the "orange revolution" read what said the reporter of the British newspaper SPECTATOR ( November 6, 2004), John Laughland, denouncing "the nostalgics of the Ukrainian fascists" from 1919 to 1950 (4). The GUARDIAN (London), revealed at the same time, that the pseudo "democrats" of PORA sang anti-Semitic old hymns of the twenties-fourties!
The biased speech on the nature of the pro-NATO and pro-UE neo-fascists in Eastern Europe is the same in Ukraine as in the Baltics, Belarus, Moldova or Russia itself. There are then good fascist useful to NATO. What is unacceptable in Paris, Brussels or Berlin, becomes acceptable elsewhere. And neo-fascists are euphemistically renamed "nationalists" in a general historical revisionism. In Ukraine, since 2004, the neo-fascist extreme right was reclassified as "democrat". One could well read in 2004 in the "COURRIER INTERNATIONAL " (Paris) that the Ukrainian city of Lviv, the center of insurgency, "represents the democratic tradition of Ukraine." As it is the traditional stronghold of xenophobic and anti-Semitic nationalism.
SVOBODA here today together with BATKIVCHTCHINA of Yulia Tymoshenko, renewing the Orange alliances of 2004.
UKRAINE AGAIN DIVIDED IN TWO BLOCKS
But back to the Parliamentary elections. The Prime Minister claims victory. After the publication of opinion polls to exit polls, Prime Minister Mykola Azarov has immediately welcomed the "victory" of the ruling party. "We believe that the Party of Regions will have a majority," he said during a press conference on Sunday evening.
As in 2004, 2007 and 2010, a pro-Russian Bloc is opposed to a new pro-Western and anti-Russian coalition.
A vision we must, to remain objective, balance by the fact that things are less clear-cut in the political reality. Thus we must also take into account the interests of Ukrainian oligarchs. Situation reminiscent of the beginnings of the Putin regime in Russia, where Yanukovych is trying to reduce their influence. And the action of the latter, generally favorable to Moscow, also plays on EU-NATO-Russia relations to maintain maximum independence.
"Udar and Svoboda were the big surprises of the vote and will enter for the first time in Parliament. Vitali Klitschko has already reiterated his promise to partner with Batkivchtchina and Svoboda in the new assembly. " Facing them the Party of Regions and its communist allies. Experts believe with good reason that the ruling party will succeed in forming a majority particularly with the recruitment of members elected by majority vote.
Hence the anger of pro-Western parties and their sponsors of NATO and the EU, including the OSCE. The elections, the first major vote since coming to power in 2010 of President Viktor Yanukovych, were indeed "closely monitored by the West," "concerned about the decline of democracy in Ukraine" (sic), "which the imprisonment since 2011 of the former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is considered an emblematic case "(resic). The alliance BATKIVCHTCHINA and Ukrainian observers reported fraud observed during the day Sunday and during the counting of votes, referring in particular to "ballot stuffing" (impossible with webcams), without for the time re- questioning the results of the vote.
AGAIN THE SHADY GAME OF THE OSCE
Observers of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) then followed. No surprise. In a media-political operation, similar to those conducted as in Russia in December 2011 and March 2012, where Yulia Tymoshenko plays the main role.
The opponent denounces indeed a "falsification of the elections" and began a hunger strike in her prison to protest against what she sees as a "falsification of the parliamentary elections” on Sunday, her lawyer said Monday.
"I began a hunger strike in protest against the falsification of elections," Yulia Tymoshenko announced in a statement read by her lawyer, Sergei Vlassenko MP, while the alliance including her party came in second position, behind the ruling party. The former Ukrainian Prime Minister "has officially informed the prison authorities that she had stopped eating on Monday and drank only water," said her lawyer at the exit of the hospital in Kharkov (East) where Tymoshenko sentenced to seven years in prison for abuse of power, is since May due to herniated discs.
Earlier in the day, observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), unsurprisingly, strongly criticized the Ukrainian elections in Kiev, considering that "they had a setback for democracy in this former Soviet republic. " Unsurprisingly because some OSCE observers foreshadowed "fraud" in Kiev on Friday … "Taking into account the abuse of power and the excessive role of money in this election, it seems that the democratic progress that had been observed retreat in Ukraine, "said a representative of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Walburga Habsburg Douglas, in a statement.
Accusations that the Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Tigipko sweeps back : "The opposition is free to campaign, they just complain to prepare their next failure."
Note that the independent non-aligned missions, including those of EODE and ECGA which intend to practice a scientific election monitoring (5) have published conclusions diametrically opposed and conclude to open democratic elections.
IS THE WEST WELL PLACED FOR DETERMINING CRITERIA FOR VALIDATION OF ELECTIONS?
The pretentiousness of Western observers and organizations from which they come to claim determine democracy criteria of an election is fun. When the Atlanticist flagship democracy, that of the U.S. hegemon, is about to fraudulently elect – thanks to a well-functioning system in 2000 and 2004 by G. W. Bush and his spin-doctors, including the infamous Karl Rove, now serving Romney – the next U.S. president.
"Should we fear cheating during the U.S. election? "headlined precisely the daily LA LIBRE BELGIQUE (Brussels) on 30 October, stating that" The shadow of 2000 hangs over 2012: should we fear cheating during the U.S. election? These concerns are not new and the Anglo-Saxon term SNAFU is back in fashion: "Situation Normal: All Fucked Up" (which can be translated as "the situation is dire, but it has always been like that") ( …) In an election that all polls ahead shoulder to shoulder, every vote counts. The slightest manipulation can change everything. "" Cheating in Ohio is possible, "explains Pierre Guerlain, a professor of American Civilization at the University of Paris 10 Nanterre-La Défense. "And his “possible" means rather a" probable ". "(6)
And Pierre Guerlain is not the only one to evoke a fraudulent scheme. Here Nicholas Dungan, a researcher at the Atlantic Council and advisor to the IRIS: "When everything is local, it is very difficult to control. '
For Wladimir Churov, Chairman of the Central Election Commision of the Russian Federation, "the dark side of the American elections is that OSCE observers were banned from entering polling stations, even in states that are under U.S. federal law (…) Unfortunately for the American voters, the international monitoring of the U.S. electoral process, which seems seriously vulnerable to manipulation, is not sufficient to guarantee democratic standards "(7).
Churov alludes to an incredible fact. The prohibition of entry of OSCE observers – OSCE which includes the USA – in the polls for the presidential election in 2012, in many U.S. states, in particular Texas (8). So the OSCE, which intends to give lessons in democracy to many states – not those of NATO – and which "regularly sends its observers to monitor the elections in the world," is unable to control the electoral process in the USA, yet highly contested.
UKRAINE IN THE CONTEXT OF THE 2015 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
But back to the Ukraine.
The country is divided by two opposing visions of the future. Torn between supporters of the West – NATO and EU – and those of the "second Europe" built around Russia today.
"Pressed by Moscow to join the customs union with Kazakhstan and Belarus against a reduction in the price of Russian gas delivered to Ukraine, Yanukovych should also spare the European Union, expected in the coming months to ratify an agreement with Kiev of Association (ASA). " "The Ukrainian oligarchs have invested heavily in the West and they are afraid of the Russians, so they are wary of customs integration with Moscow, analyses Petro Burkovski, a political scientist at the National Institute of Strategic Studies. They also need stability and a clarification of the rules of the economic game. The need to find a balance between these competing interests could promote openness in the coming years." The different political parties know it, the real struggle for the political future of the country will engage in the presidential election of 2015.
LM
Second part:
Luc MICHEL for EODE Think Tank /
# EODE THINK TANK / UKRAINE REPORT 2012 /
Part II: THE GEOPOLITICAL CONTEXT 2004-2015
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NOTES AND REFERENCES:
(1) EODE participated in several missions in monitoring the elections in Ukraine in collaboration with NGO’s ICES and ECGA.
In particular in KIEV, with Fabrice Beaur, administrator of the Zone Russia-Caucasus of EODE. And in LUGANSK, DONETZ and DNJEPROPETROVSK, the industrial cities of the Russian-speaking east.
(2) What is behind “the relative success of extreme Ukrainian nationalists at the latest parliamentary poll? SOVODA, the Freedom Party, headed by notorious politician Oleg Tyagnobok, has gathered about 10 per cent of the votes, which guarantees it some seats in the parliament. We must remind that Tyagnibok’s last openly anti-Semitic speech took place in 2004 and that cost the politician the membership in the Our Ukraine parliamentary faction and a parliamentary seat. In the 2004 speech, Tyagnibok glorified the Ukrainian nationalists known for their collaboration with the Nazis and called upon his supporters “to continue the struggle against Russians and Jews”.
Cfr. Ukrainian Jews prepare ‘blacklist of anti-Semites’, RUSSIA TODAY, 31 October, 2012 :
(3) “Ukraine remains divided on the nationalist issue and the events of the Second World War. Nationalism has traditionally been strong in the west of the country. In eastern Ukraine, the glorification of such figures as Bandera and Shukevich and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army has always prompted protests. Regularly, nationalists helded marches in the capital, Kiev, in honor of the anniversary of the creation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. In response, local Communists organized rallies protesting against the “falsification of history.”
Stepan Bandera was leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) which collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II. The OUN was involved in terrorist acts against civilians who opposed a national Ukrainian state, as well as in ethnic cleansing of Poles and Jews in western Ukraine.
Roman Shukhevych commanded the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a military wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists from 1943 till 1950. Between 1941 and 1943, he also served in the armed units of the Third Reich as a deputy commander of Nachtigall, a Wehrmacht unit accused by historians of mass killings of Jews and Poles.”
Cfr. Ukrainian сourt rules against Nazi collaborators becoming heroes again, RUSSIA TODAY, 14 October, 2011 :
(4) Cfr. John Laughland, in SPECTATOR, 6 novembre 2004 :
“A few years ago, a friend of mine was sent to Kiev by the British government to teach Ukrainians about the Western democratic system. His pupils were young reformers from western Ukraine, affiliated to the Conservative party. When they produced a manifesto containing 15 pages of impenetrable waffle, he gently suggested boiling their electoral message down to one salient point. What was it, he wondered? A moment of furrowed brows produced the lapidary and nonchalant reply, “To expel all Jews from our country”. It is in the west of Ukraine that support is strongest for the man who is being vigorously promoted by America as the country’s next president: the former prime minister Viktor Yushchenko. On a rainy Monday morning in Kiev, I met some young Yushchenko supporters, druggy skinheads from Lvov. They belonged both to a Western-backed youth organisation, Pora, and also to Ukrainian National Self-Defence (Unso), a semi-paramilitary movement whose members enjoy posing for the cameras carrying rifles and wearing fatigues and balaclava helmets. Were nutters like this to be politically active in any country other than Ukraine or the Baltic states, there would be instant outcry in the US and British media; but in former Soviet republics, such bogus nationalism is considered anti-Russian and therefore democratic”.
(5) See EODE-TV, during a conference organized on October 13, 2011 in the RUSSIAN CIVIC CHAMBER on Russian elections, Luc MICHEL analyzed the shady game of the OSCE and Western NGOs:
SCIENTIFIC ELECTION MONITORING VERSUS WESTERN INTERVENTIONISM
Intervention in the debates in English: http://vimeo.com/31521294
Conference in French: http://vimeo.com/31178690
Reading in English: http://vimeo.com/31499424
(6) Pierre Guerlain, in "Should we fear cheating during the U.S. election? ", LA LIBRE BELGIQUE Brussels, 30 October 2012.
Listen to Pierre Guerlain: "The voting machines are managed by the Bush clan for years and acquaintances also appear between these companies and Romney. Already in 2004, Diebold, a leading provider of voting machines in the country, was led by Walden O'Dell. But the man has a dual role: he is very active at the time in Bush's reelection committee. This is a Republican pure sugar. In 2004, he most certainly cheated in favor of his candidate. This year, in a number of states, in particular Ohio, swing state that could swing the election, voting machines will be provided by the company Hart InterCivic, partly owned by the investment fund HIG Capital. The discomfort occurs when the FORBES magazine, through its columnist Rick Ungar, announced that four bosses of the company, including founder Tony Tamer, played the role of "fundraiser" on behalf of Mitt Romney during the presidential campaign, while two members of the board would be personal contributors of the campaign of the Republican. The unease settles when one learns that the company is the 11th largest contributor to the campaign. Unease drags on when we know that Romney's son, Tagg, owner of the investment company Solamere Capital, shares business interests with HIG Capital. '
"It must be said that these machines are easy to tamper: each county organizes the vote as it wishes, so there are 50,000 different ways to vote, and it is very difficult to control," explains Pierre Guerlain. "And this is not new (…) In 2000, the election between Al Gore and George W. Bush is still tainted with a lot of doubts about the fairness of the process "," reference to recount in Florida. It took one month to the Supreme Court to ultimately determine with 537 votes ahead of his opponent, Bush's victory, "said La Libre. What about 2012? "The teams of lawyers are ready on both sides to intervene. It is possible that there are big debates in the aftermath of the election and we will not be able to announce the winner in the first hour, "concludes Pierre Guerlain. "If there is cheating, it will be in favor of Mitt Romney. We talked about falsification of the election of Kennedy in 1960 but since then, the Democrats have not been suspected though in 2008 there is some doubt. In swing states, in articular Ohio and Florida, it is possible that some figures were manipulated but not to the point of reversing the election. '
(7) Vladimir Churov, Chairman of the Central Election Commision of the Russian Federation,
in “Hack the vote: Russian election chief rips US elections, voting machines”, RUSSIA TODAY, 31 October 2012 :
(8) The State of Texas, in the southern United States, threatens to sue the observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) if they go to the polls during the presidential election on November 6. The Minister of Justice of the State, mostly conservative, Greg Abbott, warned this week the OSCE that its observers will not be allowed within 30 meters of a polling station, with the risk of committing "a criminal offense" . "Failure to do so could lead to prosecution of the representatives of the OSCE," writes Mr. Abbott in a letter to the Head of Unit for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the OSCE, Daan Everts. "Any group or individual from outside the United States is not allowed to influence or interfere in the electoral process in Texas," he says.
He specifically criticized Daan Everts to have met with organizations like Project Vote, fighting against a new electoral law in Texas considered discriminatory for disadvantaged minorities. The law of 2011, which was rejected by an appeal court in Washington in August, requires in order to vote, to present a driver's license, a passport or a permit to carry weapons, but refuses student card or proof of residence, hitherto allowed. Texas has appealed this decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. Many voices believe that the law disqualifies minority voters, mostly favorable to Democrats, because they often do not have birth certificates or because the establishment of their identity is costly and complicated. Greg Abbott cites an opinion of the OSCE that this would be "an obstacle to the right to vote." "Your opinion is not legally valid in the United States, where the Supreme Court has already held these laws constitutional " (in Georgia and Indiana, note), says Abbott.
Cf. "In Texas, international observers are not welcome," in LE MONDE, Paris, 24 October 2012:
and "Texas warns OSCE: forbidden to approach polling stations" LIBERATION Paris, 25 October 2012:
Photos :
Counting votes in Odessa