Recently, the phrase
"elections in the occupied part of the Donbas" has somehow become
synonymous with the word "peace". At the very least, foreign and
domestic advisers and consultants see a clear cause and effect relationship
here. They say that as long as there is an electoral battle, there will be no
war.
It is very easy to predict
what kind of elections there will be. Although I have never stood for election
myself, I have seen every trick in the book behind the scenes. Most of these
stories are almost comical. But in the end, after laughing, we had to cry
too... Aware of our own responsibility for this thoughtlessness.
I was not lucky enough to vote
for the first president of Ukraine or have my say concerning the Declaration of
Independence, as I had not yet reached the required age. Nonetheless, as a
student at Donetsk National University, I experienced the next electoral race
first hand. With my feet and ears.
"On election day, all students
are not allowed to go home until they have voted! Course tutors should be
present at polling stations and record their groups' turnout. Students who live
in dormitories are noted separately: The dorm lift will not be turned on until
all students registered in the building have voted!" – my photo album has
a black-and-white picture in front of this sign in the university hall of
residence, which even then seemed ridiculous to us. For the record, the
building had 14 floors, so the lift was a big thing! And this was still not
enough! Cars with loudspeakers were set up near the halls in the morning, so
that lazy students would not "forget about" the voting process and
the necessary parties would not lose votes (by the way, we were given their promotion
materials at all classes and examinations). At exactly 8 a.m. we sprang up with
a start, when Irina Allegrova, a Russian pop singer, started to blast out at
full volume. We had no idea why she of all people was chosen to rouse the
conscience of us devil-may-care students. However, it was hard to endure this
outrage for too long – the girls and boys slowly stumbled down to the polling
station, afterwards sitting on the grass in anticipation of the promised lift.
"Petro! Come down
already! We've been stuck here for over two hours because of you!"
Ukrainian language students in unison tried to entice out their classmates, too
lazy to run up the stairs to the top floor. The rector surely got a
considerable "reward" for the high turnout.
Then I managed to get involved
in the elections as an observer. On behalf of the opposition Yabluko party,
which attempted to take a stand against FUU, the "For a United
Ukraine!" alliance that was popular in the Donbas at the time (it was
immediately nicknamed FUUD due to the food packages it distributed to potential
voters). I was on duty at a polling station in the small hall of the city gas
office with a Communist grandma and a chap from the Social-Democratic Party,
who as it turned out, was on friendly terms with the manager of the gas office
and strong alcohol. Almost the whole day was spent stoically staring at the
ballot boxes in order to prevent any illegal actions. Towards evening, our
opponents' nerves gave out. The winking manager called the Social-Democrat
observer into his office and they devoured a bottle of cognac. After this, he
could not care less about boxes or candidates. The old lady, as idea-driven as
she was, had to answer the call of nature, and was promptly locked in the
toilet.
She started to hammer on the door, shouting slogans and threats. And I,
thin in both figure and voice, was simply obstructed by the body of a macho
skinhead, who hissed "Just try to shout, I'll kill you!" – at this
moment, another athletically built fellow pulled a few wads of ballot papers
out of his trousers and tried to stuff them into a box. For some reason, I did
not feel like dying for some paper pulled out of someone's trousers, especially
as the fuss made by the communist relic in the lavatory was not helping anyway.
It is unlikely that our duo or even trio with the tipsy Social Democrat would
have been able to intimidate the ballot-stuffing specialists. Yabluko activists
ended up calling the police, but they were advised to go home so that nothing
would happen to me. The musclemen were smoking around the corner, snarling
right at me.
It was worse still in 2004.
Then, the cynicism reached a caricature-like level, and the election began to
resemble a contest for the most impressive fraud. Teachers went around
apartments where voters lived, very persistently asking who would definitely
not go to vote for whatever reason. This was called "voter
verification". Subsequently, all the electorate from those apartments,
including some who already died but were still registered as residents there,
turned up to their polling stations in the shape of these very same teachers...
They put on wigs and changed their coats around the corner, applied different
shades of lipstick and went back several times in order to help "their
president" win.
I, admittedly, took advantage
of one such dead constituent myself –I just wanted to experience how the process
takes place first-hand. Only I think that the choice of my "proxy
voter" would not have pleased the people in charge of the whole rigmarole.
Ten years later, in 2014, we
were not given a chance to choose our next president at all. I rush towards the
local authority office where the election commission is stationed. A colleague
calls me, "Don't come, we've been captured!" I do not have time to
react before I run into an armed man in a balaclava on the steps of the office.
He rocks his machine gun back and forth, his eyes glinting expressively, as if
to say – run along somewhere else with your camera. So I run. But not too far,
because a crowd of people gathers by the nearby newspaper kiosk. I had no
intention of leaving the regional press without unique – as it seemed to me at
the time – photographs. Finding cover behind a newspaper, I take pictures of
the car into which two men in camouflage are loading all the paperwork from the
constituency's election commission. Later it turned out that the purses belonging
to female commissioners had been seized at the same time too. Obviously, to
make extra sure that the voting would not go ahead. One of the members of the
electoral commission told me he realised that only one gunman remained in the
room at any one time, so he made a gesture to a policeman, who was lying
face-down on the floor, suggesting they overpower and disarm the intruder.
However, seeing the policeman’s eyes wide with fear and vigorously shaking
head, he realised that this hero could not be relied on. The law enforcement
officer continues to perform his duties to this day, especially persistent in
not letting Ukrainian activists into the local authority office. Unlike the
masked man with arms during elections, activists do not have guns, after all.
A few days later, local
residents, among which I saw my pensioner neighbour, return to the scene in
order to spirit away the ballot boxes and papers. A woman leads him by the arm,
telling him why he needs to do be there. A minibus is swiftly brought to the
commission office and papers from the polling station are enthusiastically
thrown inside. The "rescuers" believe that voting is detrimental to
the health of local residents.
We chose our representatives
to parliament only after being liberated. Well, who could we choose from? It
was more the realisation that there is no choice. It was basically a
head-to-head between the odious Serhiy Klyuyev, the brother of Yanukovych’s
ex-chief of staff and ex-Party of Regions MP who built a playground in every
yard with stolen money, and the son of the then mayor. The latter had already
been to parliament once and distinguished himself by using his powerful
physique to block the rostrum. Klyuyev’s sandpits and swings won the hearts and
minds of local residents, which very much offended the mayor. Shortly after
being elected to Rada, Klyuyev fled (he was charged with abuse of power and
fraud), presumably to Russia, leaving us without a representative in
parliament. Needless to say, decent candidates from democratic parties, which
progressive citizens would have gone to vote for, were simply not nominated.
Why would they be? The election rules of the Donbas do not provide for such a
luxury. Why waste energy and money? You say "elections in the occupied
part"... What else do we not know about their principles? And most
importantly – how is this circus supposed to ensure peace and harmony?
Translated
by Jonathan Reilly
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