Ukraine - elections and lots of travelling

12.00.00pm GMT Thu 30th Dec 2004

Colin Ross, Sue Simmonds and Dave Radcliffe in Ukraine

Well I am now back from Ukraine, it was a great experience, but very tiring and quite hard work. I was in Ukraine for OSCE - The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe as one of the Election observers for the re-run of the Presidential Elections. I was just one of the 100 observers from the UK - two friends of mine Sue Simmonds and Dave Radcliffe, were also observers.

We flew out on 22 and were away for just a week, but it seemed much longer. We arrived in Kyiv (Kiev has been renamed) relatively late and after being herded through the airport and to the hotels and through check-in I met up with Sue and Dave and a couple of others we picked up on the way and went to a really nice restaurant for dinner.

The next day we had an all day briefing. The briefing covered the history of this and the previous elections, how their electoral system worked, what our roles and responsibilities in this election were and the safety aspects. After the briefing I, and the rest of 'team 26' were taken to and put on a sleeper train to Donetsk (Sue went to Dnipropetrovsk and Dave to Ternopil).

Donetsk is in the east and the train took over twelve hours to get there. Upon arrival I and nine others were told that we would not in fact be staying in Donetsk but in fact be heading further south to Mariupol on the coast (and very near the Russian border) but first we had a briefing.

After the briefing we had a two-hour car journey to Mariupol. I think we were all knackered by the time we arrived but we realised it was Christmas Eve so the ten of us, our drivers and our interpreters went out for meal to celebrate before having a relatively early night.

Christmas Day, or the day before Polling Day as we knew it, we split again into two teams each covering a Territorial Election Commission (TEC) - On Polling Day I will be paired Wolfgang Sattler from Austria and we and one pair will be observing in TEC 55. We visited the Chief of Police and the TEC to speak to them about the elections and identify any problems in advance. The visit to the police went OK, but the visit the TEC was a bit problematic with most members not being there and also some problems with people trying to obtain observer accreditation and absentee ballots, we had to come back a further two times before we either speak to the Chair of the TEC and also be satisfied that the problems were being resolved. We also visited a few Polling Stations to check everything was alright, finally we worked out with the other pair for TEC 55 what we would all do on Polling Day.

On Polling Day Wolfgang and I were on the 'late' shift which meant we started after lunch and then would work through until tomorrow morning. We visited seven Polling Stations meeting with the Polling Station staff, electors and observers both other international observers and Ukrainian observers.

Just before eight (when polls closed) we went to the TEC where we stayed for the next twelve hours! Whilst each Polling Station counted the ballots in their station the results were then transfered to the TEC, where they received received - sealed and stamped, and added together. The TEC was also responsible for settling any disputes. Whilst at the TEC we met an MP (Yushchenko supporting) who was in fact by profession a doctor and he was the one that first spotted Yushchenko's poisoning!

We stayed at the TEC until about eight am, when it became obvious that two Polling Stations were unlikely to report anytime soon and we had get get back to Kyiv! So after quickly returning to the hotel and showering we headed back to Donetsk for a mini debrief and then onto another sleeper train to Kyiv.

Having arrived back in Kyiv, I met up with Sue and Dave and we did a bit of sightseeing, well it seemed odd to come to Ukraine and not do any! We firstly went down to 'Tent City' which was in a good mood as all the reports were suggesting Yushchenko had won. We then visited St. Andrew.s and Sophie's. Orthodox Churches followed by a trip to the Monasteries.

In the evening we attended a thank-you reception from OSCE and then went out for another nice meal having having a few hours sleep and then flying back to the UK!

I have not said much about how the voting went, this is mainly because I can not say very much, below is a link to the OSCE report. What I can say is from what I saw, on the whole whilst there were inconsistencies between some Polling Stations I did not see any real evidence of fraud, any problems were in my opinion, due to lack of training of the Polling Station rather than anything organised.

Related Link:

The OSCE Report