On October 25 this year, local elections were held in Ukraine. By virtue of its statutory tasks, the international human rights organisation “Solidarity Network” monitored legislative, logistical, organizational, and information support of the process of expression of the will of citizens. After monitoring open sources, interviewing candidates and voters, as well as listening to the opinion of experts, we are obliged to give an extremely low assessment of the Ukrainian authorities, civil society and politicians.
Before the elections in Ukraine, the electoral legislation was again updated, which has already become a kind of ritual, tradition, as well as the creation of favorable conditions “for themselves” from those in power. The Electoral Code, the brainchild of Zelensky and his mono-majority, so confused and complicated the procedure for nominating, voting and counting votes that even seasoned lawyers and political scientists did not fully understand how this process was taking place. We don’t think we understood it to this day. Obviously, it could be seen how on one advertising poster campaigning to vote for candidates from one party from one district to one council, but coming under different numbers in the district list. Thus, the campaign called for a mutually exclusive choice, since a citizen could vote for only one candidate from the constituency. Neither those wishing to become deputies, nor voters did not understand the importance of the general list of candidates (proportional), although it played a decisive role due to the high size of the electoral quota (another innovation). A complex newsletter, in which you must not only put the notorious tick, but also draw numbers on a stencil. This caused massive damage to the ballots, controversy over which figure is drawn and which graphical order of drawing this figure. In fact, it was necessary to conduct separate courses and trainings to clarify the procedure for filling out electoral documents and the principle of passing a candidate for deputy.
Political dishonesty and corruption. Many candidates easily changed parties, some especially cunning ones have 5-6 political forces in their background, with diametrically opposite ideology. All-Ukrainian political leaders calmly accepted this, which indicates a banal sale of places and even entire territorial organizations. We understand that partisanship has been turned into a kind of simulacrum, a legal instrument and is not a part of civil society in Ukraine. What separately speaks of nepotism and nepotism in local elections in Ukraine.
As a touch, let us highlight the absolute pro-power and the absence of opposition at the local level. Regardless of the flags, all local politicians are either loyal (business interests), or directly integrated into the bureaucratic pool, and mimic the winner in one minute. The non-binding nature of electoral programs leads to the fact that candidates have ceased to make specific promises, posting only slogans consisting of general phrases.
The absence of a column “against all”, sky-high pledges, the obligation to run only from the party, a high passing barrier and the possibility of any turnout – created conditions for cutting off public figures, cementing local “political monopolists” and the impossibility of the people to fully express their opinion.
The above, the lack of an alternative and the coronavirus hysteria, as a result, provoked a record low turnout (36.88%) and a total distrust of the elections as an act of direct democracy. In such situations, the famous “carousels” and electoral nets, as well as the administrative resource, worked well. Local “kings”, having perfectly prepared, were able to swoop in to organize tens of thousands of votes, which, given a low turnout, gave deafening results. The Servant of the People party, having too much confidence in television and Internet advertising, could not oppose anything to the systemic work of local “elites”, carried out a dubious selection of candidates, turning into such a political franchise. The result is defeat! Considering that delegated people are sewn into the body of the party in power, and most likely not for free, by the same feudal lords, then Zelensky with a personal rating of 31.8%, and the result obtained in the elections – 10-15%, even lost hope of creating a complete vertical of power. On the face of the complete profanity of his team!
The elections revealed a deep split in society and a political crisis of governance at the level of a common man in the street. It is impossible to speak about the formed local government as legitimate from a formal philosophical, logical and political point of view. And, so, everything is according to the law adopted by the oligarchs for themselves. The collapse of the “popular will” requires an immediate reboot of political institutions and a real reform of the procedure for the formation of representative bodies.