Despite warnings of large-scale election fraud in the days leading up to Sunday’s vote, officials and international election observers have said the ballot was fair and orderly. The preliminary report of the International Election Observation Mission (OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, NATO Parliamentary Assembly, European Parliament Mps, OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe) concluded that the first round of the presidential elections in Ukraine was held in accordance with the majority of obligations taken within the framework of the OSCE and Council of Europe.

The report talks about that “significant progress has been made in comparison with the last election”. It also concludes that the election showed respect for civil political rights and provided the electorate with the opportunity of a real choice of the candidates who represented different political views.

“This election was very good. This was a high quality election,” the president of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and special coordinator of the OSCE short-term observers’ mission, Joao Soares, said. He also said that the election campaign was calm, organized and none of the concerns about large-scale vote rigging proved to be true (Interfax-Ukraine, January 18, 2010).

The positive assessment was not unique for the Western European observers’ mission, but was also shared by other organizations that monitored the vote. The Inter-parliamentary Assembly of the CIS countries concluded that the race was largely in line with democratic standards (5 Kanal, Ukrainian TV, January 18, 2010). This unity in assessing the election is quite notable, as often during recent years, assessments from the OSCE and CIS election observation missions in elections in the CIS area have opposed each other diametrically. This was, for instance, the case in the previous Ukrainian presidential elections in 2004.

However, despite the positive general assessments, Sunday’s vote was, of course, not completely spotless. The Ukrainian NGO Committee of Voters of Ukraine (CVU) reported violations although also emphasizing that they were not systemic in character. Among the main violations, the CVU named: attempts to take ballots out [of polling stations]; spoiling of ballots; violations of the rights of observers and journalists; violations of the procedure for opening polling stations. Violations were also observed when voters were included on electoral rolls on polling day and during home voting. The CVU recommended that parliament regulate these procedures this week, before the second round on February 7.

Furthermore, Prime Minister Tymoshenko’s campaign chief, Oleksandr Turchynov, claimed at least 3 percentage points had been “stolen” from Tymoshenko and awarded to Yanukovych at the first round of voting through local falsifications at many polling stations in eastern Ukraine (Ukrainian Journal, January 19, 2010). This comment signals the Tymoshenko campaign might be playing out scenario that would seek contesting election results and, perhaps, starting massive street protests if the second round does not end in a Tymoshenko victory.