Canadian Election Observers In Ukraine Face Harassment, Threats

TORONTO, Canada -- A group of Canadians in Ukraine to observe this weekend's national elections were harassed and threatened by local officials on Friday after questioning apparent irregularities in voting procedures.

Canadian Liberal leadership candidate Gerard Kennedy
Gerard Kennedy said his group of 18 observers was shouted at, threatened with arrest and denounced as provocateurs on local television by party officials at an election centre in Mariupol, a regional industrial centre in southeast Ukraine.

The former Ontario education minister and Liberal leadership candidate said officials who checked the observers' credentials also demanded to see their passports, which they seized. The documents were returned after 15-20 minutes.

Regional election centres are responsible for producing voters lists and distributing ballots to polling places.

The dispute erupted when election officials - who are party functionaries - refused to accept the Canadian observers' complaint that the centre's voters list contained 13,000 duplicate names and that the centre was distributing 30 per cent more ballots than needed.

"We did find some problems" with preparations for Sunday's vote, Kennedy said in a telephone interview. "We found what we think is evidence of potential fraud, and we suffered some degree of intimidation in our observer duties, we think as a result."

At one point, Kennedy said, two busloads of police arrived at the centre and several armed officers entered, in contravention of election rules.

A Ukrainian election expert accompanying the observer group was charged with interfering in an election, but not detained.

"We were followed, and people came in to intimidate us from talking to people at the polls and obtain the information," Kennedy said. "At one point local television showed up and we were denounced on TV."

Finally, Kennedy said, cooler heads prevailed and the group was permitted to do its work.

"The other parties decided that they wanted to work with the nice people from Canada, so we were able to head off any more reckless kind of folks."

But Kennedy noted that the irregularities the group saw raised concern that "there's some very severe falsification likely to occur in Mariupol on Sunday unless other interventions take place, and that's not for us to do."

Kennedy said his group had heard of problems being reported from other regions, including extra ballots being issued.

"This is the most extreme of what we saw, and at the same time there were numerous other stations that we visited that were in good working order," he said.

There are about 3,000 international observers monitoring Ukraine's hotly contested election, which pits prime minister Viktor Yanukovich's Party of Regions against President Viktor Yushchenko's Our Ukraine and a bloc led by former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

None of the parties is expected to win a majority, which has led to intense negotiations for the formation of a governing coalition in Parliament.

Source: The Canadian Press