Monitoring showed that Poroshenko leads in election violations
The current President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, combines official and campaign activity more than anyone else during the election process and campaigns for himself during working hours, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
This is stated in the published report of the OPORA Civil Network based on the results of observation on the eve of the presidential elections in Ukraine.
“According to established terminology, abuse of administrative resources during elections is a situation where individual parties or candidates have non-competitive advantages to influence the outcome of elections through the use of their official positions or connections with the government. Abuse of administrative resources in the electoral process may include the use of human resources of authorities, official events, budget funds, and the potential of law enforcement agencies in electoral interests... The practice of election campaigning by candidate for the post of President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko included a fairly wide list of incidents with signs of abuse of administrative resources in elections . Despite isolated cases of use of power resources by other candidates, it was the current President of Ukraine who most failed to effectively distinguish between official and campaign activities during the election process,” the report says.
As OPORA noted, the main types of incidents with signs of abuse of administrative resources in favor of presidential candidate Poroshenko were the use of social payments and budget programs in election campaigning, the combination of election campaigning and official events within the framework of meetings of Regional Development Councils, the use of websites of district state administrations and the involvement of officials persons of local authorities to de facto campaigning activity.
The recorded problems have the potential to have a negative impact on the practical provision of the principle of equality of conditions and opportunities for all candidates for the post of President of Ukraine, the civil network notes.
“During March 2019, the current President of Ukraine, presidential candidate Petro Poroshenko held a meeting of the Regional Development Councils in Ternopil, Chernivtsi, Khmelnitsky, Ivano-Frankivsk, Rivne, Poltava, Transcarpathian, Chernihiv, Zhytomyr, Cherkasy, Dnepropetrovsk, Nikolaev, Odessa, Donetsk regions. The Regional Development Council is a consultative and advisory body under the President of Ukraine, while local state administrations, by their own orders, were authorized to create corresponding local councils. The intensification of the activities of these councils in the conditions of the electoral process and the intensive personal participation of Petro Poroshenko in their local meetings have signs of the use of administrative resources in order to attract the attention of voters to the candidate. In this context, it is necessary to emphasize the key role of civil servants in organizing meetings of regional development councils,” the report notes.
In particular, the organization of transportation of citizens to the venues of regional development councils with the help of district state administrations was recorded. In some cases, it was recorded that participants in these official events of the authorities were later transported to the sites of campaign meetings of the candidate for the post of President of Ukraine (the city of Khmelnitsky, Khmelnitsky region; the city of Kovel, Volyn region, etc.).
“As a rule, the trip of the current head of state included organizing a meeting of the Regional Development Council and holding a campaign event in his support after official events. OPORA observers note that it was difficult for local media and voters to separate the official activities of Petro Poroshenko and his campaign activity during trips to other regions of Ukraine. This was due to the de facto combination of official and campaign reasons to attract voters’ attention to the candidacy of Petro Poroshenko,” the report notes.
This nature of the election campaign of the current President of Ukraine, according to OPORA, creates unsatisfactory conditions for ensuring the principle of competitiveness of elections and the principle of equality of conditions and opportunities for candidates for the post of President of Ukraine.
OPORA observers also expressed concern about the identified cases of involving employees of budgetary organizations in direct and indirect campaigning in support of candidate Poroshenko. For example, as noted in the civil network, in the Lviv region, participants in candidate campaign groups are often employees of social services, branches of the State Enterprise “Ukrposhta” or other budgetary organizations. Thus, the head of the department of social protection of the population of the Yavorov Regional State Administration (Lvov region), Ulyana Ganusyak, who serves as an employee of Petro Poroshenko’s election headquarters in the region, in a comment to an OPORA observer, explained the current practice by the desire of citizens to receive additional income during elections.
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