2 коментарів Юлія Тимошенко: врятувати демократію в Україні

Europe will soon find a new dictatorship right on its doorstep

Yulia Tymoshenko

Kyiv Post, 29.10.2010

http://www.kyivpost.com/news/opinion/op_ed/detail/87895/#ixzz13jd60rpm

Save Ukraine's Democracy

Yulia Tymoshenko,

Wall Street Journal, 29.10.2010

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303362404575579890814896292.ht

ml?KEYWORDS=tymoshenko

Save Ukraine's Democracy

There has been a pattern of creeping authoritarianism since President

Yanukovych took office eight months ago.

By YULIA TYMOSHENKO

Sunday's elections of regional councils and city mayors in Ukraine are not

just a local affair. They warrant international scrutiny due to mounting

evidence suggesting that they will neither be free nor fair. The European

Union should be wary of a neighboring country that controls the flow of gas

to millions of EU households sliding into authoritarianism.

Europe's largest political group, the European People's Party, and the

Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe have already expressed their

alarm about government interference in the election process.

Candidates from my own party, Batkivshchyna, have been refused registration

in some of the most populous electoral districts, including the regions of

the capital Kiev and Lviv in Western Ukraine. In these places the

authorities have recognized bogus party branches, whose false candidates

will illegitimately run for election in my party's name.

The composition of the election commissions that oversee vote counting and

verification is made up mostly of members of President Viktor Yanukovych's

ruling Party of Regions and his allies. Relaxed rules on home voting give

additional cause for alarm. As the old Soviet saying goes: "What is

important is not who votes, but who counts the votes."

From the media, local party branches and election monitors across the

country come numerous reports of electoral violations, ranging from threats

against state employees who campaign for the opposition, to offering cash

bribes to students to vote for candidates loyal to the government. Last

week, 720,000 illegally printed ballot papers were found in the city of

Kharkiv. This week another 190,000 illegal ballot papers were found in

Ivano-Frankivsk.

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Laughing Stock/Corbis

These events follow a pattern of creeping authoritarianism. Since President

Yanukovych assumed office eight months ago, political power has been

centralized and civil liberties threatened. Most notably, media freedoms

have come under attack. The opposition is virtually excluded from the

airwaves as a result of pressure from media barons loyal to President

Yanukovych and self-censorship for fear of displeasing the administration or

having their offices inspected...

There are media and NGO reports of journalists being beaten and even

disappearing. Vasyl Klymentyev, for example, the editor of Novy Stil, an

investigative newspaper in Kharkiv, went missing last August. Not

surprisingly, Ukraine has dropped 42 positions to 131st place in the Media

Freedoms Index 2010, which Reporters Without Borders published last week.

The situation is unlikely to change while the head of the state security

service (SBU), Valery Khoroshkovsky, is also Ukraine's dominant media baron

and-at the same time-a member of the Higher Council of Justice, a new body

created to appoint judges and to consider cases of judicial misconduct.

Increasingly, SBU agents are being used to intimidate opposition activists.

Not even foreign NGOs are immune from this sort of harassment. In June, the

director of the Ukraine branch of the German Christian Democrats' Konrad

Adenauer Foundation had to call upon German Chancellor Angela Merkel's

office to intervene to prevent his expulsion from the country. Officials

from my former administration have also been targeted, with half a dozen

arrested and several in custody since the summer.

Most worryingly, the courts have been used to subvert the constitution. On

Oct. 1, the new members of the Constitutional Court-the old guard had been

purged by President Yanukovych-effectively canceled amendments made to the

constitution during the 2004 Orange Revolution. This reverted

Ukraine-without any public debate within civil society or parliamentary

vote-back to a presidential system, with nearly total power invested in the

president.

It is against this backdrop that policy makers across the EU and the United

States should scrutinize the fairness of Sunday's elections. Western leaders

can exert great pressure on Ukraine's government, for instance by attaching

conditions to the next round of IMF loans or by using negotiations on

Ukraine's Association Agreement with the EU as a lever. International

pressure was clearly felt when the government reversed this month moves to

seize the Kryvorizhstal steel plant from ArcelorMittal. A government that

lives only by threats understands protests and the threat of sanctions.

The voices of the European Parliament and Council of Europe are of special

importance for Ukraine's vibrant civil society. Both can impede the decline

of freedom and democracy by speaking out now. The same goes for

international NGOs.

We appeal to the international community to be vigilant and safeguard the

European values we hold so dearly. In 2004, we already had one fraudulent

election, which sparked the Orange Revolution. All the signs indicate we

will have another. The time to stand up for Ukrainian democracy is now.

Ms. Tymoshenko is the leader of Ukraine's biggest opposition party and the

country's former prime minister.