Ukraine’s 2010 election is in limbo. The changes to the election law, which Yanukovych-led majority in the parliament adopted on Wednesday and Yushchenko grudgingly signed into law, led Tymoshenko today to declare the second round fraudulent even without waiting for it to take place. She claims the new election law will give grounds to Yanukovych to dismiss her members of local election commissions and organize the vote count without any supervision. Yanukovych, on the other hand, claims that the amendments are meant to ensure that Tymoshenko does not prevent the certification of election results in the East of Ukraine – his electoral base. The mutual deep-seated distrust between the two candidates, thus, lies at the core of the current dispute.

The Essence of the Election Law Changes

The latest changes to the election law deal only with the way local commissions organize their work. The changes allow:

1)for the commissions to start their work without having a minimum quorum (which earlier was 2/3 of the commission members);

2)for the commissions to dismiss their members for not participating in the commission’s meeting on the election day; 

3)for higher-level commissions to make decisions on behalf of the lower-level commission in case the latter is non-operational;

4)for local commission members to be appointed by higher-level commissions on the suggestion of the city city mayor or head of oblast council in case the presidential candidate fails to submit the full list of commission members.

What Are the Candidates Afraid Of?

The current election law stipulates that the commission is formed by the two candidates remaining in the run-off on the basis of equal representation. Thus, if the law sets the official quorum for commission to start its work, each candidate has the power to block the commission’s work and prevent certification of results. Thus, the representatives of  Tymoshenko may, for example, just fail to show up for the district commission’s meeting to prevent the election results in a district from being certified. This is the scenario that, as Party of  Regions claim, motivated them to change the election law. The four new provisions eliminate possible loopholes for making the local commissions dysfunctional.

Explaining his decision to sign the amended election law, Yushchenko pointed to the same risks of delays in establishing results or even opening the polls on the election date. The newly amended law, in his view, eliminates these risks.

Tymoshenko, however, argues that amendments “threaten election process and ruin democracy” in Ukraine. Appealing to the international community, Tymoshenko declared that the amended puts an end to the fair election and “allows it to be falsified from the first to the last digit”.

Tymoshenko’s emotional reaction to the amended law is based on her suspicion that it would allow Party of Regions to dismiss all of her representatives from the election commissions in Eastern Ukrainian oblasts or prevent them from participating in the commissions’ work.

Both sides approach election date filled with mutual distrust and long history of mutual deception, so their suspicions can be rationalized. For Tymoshenko, however, to call the election a fraud before the election takes place is clearly premature. By themselves the changes to the election law do not hinder the fair vote count. So, until she has clear evidence that her commission members get somehow disadvantaged during the voting or excluded from the commissions’ work, her accusations will ring hollow. The main strategy Tymoshenko is pursuing, however, may be to prepare the public opinion both inside and outside of the country for her ultimate refusal to recognize the election result.