Mykola Tomenko: Most Heads of the Regional Administrations and their Subordinates failed the Preparation of the Local Elections
Today, Mykola Tomenko, Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, commented upon the election campaign, declaring that the main tendencies of the election campaign were already obvious.
"First of all, I should mention the fact that the Heads of the regional administrations delegated by the President and the Government to deal with the election campaign on the local level were so busy falsifying the election returns and providing the highest results for the Party of Regions that they failed the preparation and organization of the election campaign", M. Tomenko admitted.
According to the politician, it is for the first time in the history of the independent Ukraine that the local authorities failed to tackle the easiest tasks. "It is for the first time in the history that in certain regions 20% or even 30% of the polling stations failed to open in time", M. Tomenko emphasised. He reminded that the last (out of 31 thousand) polling station was opened with a thirty-minute delay.
The Deputy Chairman declared that as the authorities failed to support the elections, a great number of ballot papers were re-published the last night. Mykola Tomenko drew attention to the numerous misprints. "Thousands of the candidates´ names were published with misprints", he explained. Furthermore, bad organization of the work in polling stations led to the long queues and other inconveniences.
Mykola Tomenko stressed that the Heads of the regional administrations devoted all their time to the propaganda of the Party of Regions and struggle with their competitors instead of organizing the election process, which is their obligation before the Law and the public. "Thus, assessing the work of the Heads of the regional state administrations on the preparation and conduction of the local elections by a five-grade scale, they received two points ", the Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine concluded.
However, M. Tomenko singled out several positive aspects. "Owing to the mutual efforts of the public and the journalists, mass frauds were prevented", M. Tomenko admitted. He stated that as of 22.00 on Saturday, 201 candidates of Batkivshchyna party were denied registration. The figure is definitely big, although the plan was prevented", the politician stated. He also hopes to form the efficient opposition in all the regions by means of agreements with other political democratic parties. "We should preserve at least the elements of opposition and democracy in the system of the local self-government", M. Tomenko declared.