REFORMS SUPPORT NETWORK CIVIC ASSEMBLY OF UKRAINE LOCAL ELECTION 2010 PULSE OF THE COUNTRY KYIV AGENCY FOR LEGISLATIVE INITIATIVES 2011 УДК 342.8(477) ББК Х9(4Ук)300.536 М65 EDITORS-IN-CHIEF: ANDRIY KOHUT AND KATERYNA SIDASH AUTHORS: PAV LO BILAK, DEMENTYI BILYI, ANATOLIY BOYKO, OLENA CHEBANENKO, OKSANA DASHCHAKIVSKA, TETYANA DURNYEVA, OLEKSANDR KHORUZHENKO, OLEKSANDR KLIUZHEV, ANDRIY KOHUT, ROMAN KOSHOVYY, HENNADIY MAKSAK, OLGA MIROSHNYK, MYKHAYLO NAKHOD, IHOR POLISCHUK, VOLODYMYR PRYTULA, OLEKSANDR ROMANIUK, OKSANA SHERSHEN, YURIY STEPANETS, SERGIY TKACHENKO, OLEKSANDRA TSELISHCHEVA, IURII VDOVENKO. PROJECT SUPPORT: HALYNA BAKHMATOVA, YAROSLAV KATOLYK, OLEKSII KHMARA, LARYSA KHORUZHENKO, IHOR KOHUT, ОLESYA KYRYCHENKO, VOLODYMYR MASCHINOV, VOLODYMYR NAVROTSKYI, PAV LO PUSCHENKO, MYKHAILO SHELEP, VIACHESLAV SHRAMOVYCH, OLEKSANDR SYNIOOKYI, OLEKSANDR ZASLAVSKYY, YARYNA YASYNEVYCH. RESPONSIBLE FOR PUBLISHING: YURIY MARCHENKO. Local Election 2010. Pulse of the Country / Editors-in-chief: Kohut A., Sidash K. — K., Agency for Legislative Initiatives, 2011. — 228 p. The research is focusing on the expert monitoring of the local elections campaign 2010. Results of the experts ana- lytical overviews and results of the 2 rounds of experts surveys shows various aspects of the electoral process: politi- cal competiveness, quality of the electoral commissions functioning, administrative resource involvement, access to the media, involvement of the civil society organizations in the electoral process, as well as evaluation of the quality of the newly-adopted electoral legislation. Politicians and political-strategists, politologists and sociologists, analytics and experts, students and scientists as well as the broad auditorium interested in the electoral process will be interested in the current research. PARTNERS: AGENCY FOR LEGISLATIVE INITIATIVES CIVIC ASSEMBLY OF UKRAINE Reforms Support Network ISBN 978-966-1594-12-7 © Agency for Legislative Initiatives, authors of publications, 2011 CONTENT INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................5 SECTION І. LOCAL ELECTIONS 2010: NATIONAL TRENDS ..................................7 SECTION ІІ. EXPERT ASSESSMENT OF 2010 LOCAL ELECTIONS .........................21 Consortium of NGO Chernihiv Oblasts Polissya Foundation for International and Regional Studies Donetsk Oblasts Donetsk Office of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine Kharkiv Oblasts Local Democracy Foundation Kherson Oblasts Kherson Office of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine Kirovohrad Oblasts Creative Union «TORO» Kyiv Agency for Legislative Initiatives Lviv Oblasts Lviv Office of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine Odesa Oblasts Odesa Office of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine Sumy Oblasts Centre for Regional Policy Studies Ternopil Oblasts Male Adaptation Center The Autonomous Republic of Crimea The Committee for monitoring freedom of press in Crimea Vinnytsya Oblasts NGO «Nashe Podillya» Volyn Oblasts Centre for Political Analysis and Election Consulting Zakarpattya Oblasts Carpathian Human Rights Agency «VESTED» INTTRODUCTION As a study, the Local Election 2010. Pulse of the Country offers analysis of the 2010 local elec- tions in Ukraine, which for the first time were arranged separately from the parliamentary campaign. Such arrangement is customary for many democratic countries, where municipal elections take place between national elections and signal the public election attitudes. In the context of the current political situation in Ukraine, the recent election campaign has brightly demonstrated its characteristic features, which included intense political competi- tion, attempts to occupy new electoral grounds, and efforts to influence the formation of re- gional elites and further development of the administrative verticals. The general trends, inherent in modern election campaigns, and the directions of media and information policy development have confirmed the previous assumption about disintegra- tion of the information environment at the national scale as one of the problems, as well as lack of reliable information on social and political phenomena and processes, related to the election campaigns in the regions. This, without doubt, created beneficial atmosphere for unpunished use of administrative resource and other forms of election falsifications and violations. This study and the related civil society observation campaign aimed at ensuring ongoing ex- pert monitoring and assessment of the local elections, comprehensive analysis of the collected information, and publication of the relevant information and analytical materials both during the campaign (through the Local Elections 2010 Public Press Centre), and afterwards by means of this study which presents a summarised analytical report (Section І) and individual monitoring aspects (Sections ІІ and ІІІ). The Ukrainian 2010 local elections were in many respects unique. There were a number of various factors that made these elections different from the previous ones and evidenced do- mination of political interest over democratic principles and procedures. At the same time, the main positive aspect about the 2010 campaign was the fact that they were separated from the parliamentary elections. For the first time in many years, citizens, politicians, journalists, and civil society activists fully focused on local elections. The election legislation, traditionally amended almost before the beginning of the campaign, introduced a mixed election system, a new principle for the formation of election commissions, and enabled candidates to run without election programmes. The amendments also equalled the rights of civil society observers to ordinary voters, which made the full-fledged civil so- ciety observation rather hard. In addition, particular situations in each town or village and considerable differences between neighbouring cities and districts, together with a number of other specific features of the campaign, turned this observation into a complicated and bulky process. Section І «Local Elections 2010. General Trends» presents the main features of the 2010 election campaign, as well as recommendations on improvement of the existing norms and practices of the election campaign. This study was based on the expert opinion polling, as well as narrative reports of the leading regional experts. 6 Introduction Section ІІ «Expert Assessment. Local Elections 2010» lays down the expert study analysis. An independent public assessment undertaken by means of expert polling made it possible to avoid the flaws that are normally incurred by civil society observations. The expert opinion was studied through two stages of polling, done on the basis of theoretical quota and clus- ter sampling. The clusters were represented by specialised expert groups, such as journalists, civil society activists, researchers, and businessmen. No less than three representatives of each specialised group were polled in each region. The size of quotas in each region was defined theoretically. At least twenty experts were polled in each region, which was seen as sufficient to define election trends through a statistic study. The polling was done in twelve oblasts and in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. The terri- torial samples were represented by five regions: West (Zakarpattya, Lviv, Volyn, and Ternopil Oblasts), North (Sumy and Chernihiv Oblasts), East (Donetsk and Kharkiv Oblasts), South (the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Odesa and Kherson Oblasts), and Centre (Vinnytsya and Kirovohrad Oblasts). The first stage took place before the election campaign between 11 and 23 October 2010, and the second one – after the elections, between 4 and 20 November 2010. During the first stage, 251 experts were polled. The distribution between the specialised groups was as follows: journalists – 23.3 %, civil society activists – 25.3 %, civil servants – 16.9 %, businessmen – 15.7 %, and researchers – 18.9 %. 267 experts were polled at the second stage with the following distribution of experts: journalists – 25.8 %, civil society activists – 26.9 %, civil servants – 14.4 %, businessmen – 12.9 %, and researchers – 20.1 %. Section ІІІ «Regional Narrative Reports» contains reports prepared by regional coordina- tors of the civil society observation on the course, main trends, and results of the election campaign. The information has been provided in accordance with a reconciled matrix, which does not only include all main blocks of issues, important for the coverage of the election campaign («Political Competition», «Administrative Resource», «Media and NGOs»), but also correlates with the previous expert opinion poll, supplementing the main trends by local traces and examples. The study and the project have been implemented by the Consortium of civil society organi- sations under the general coordination of the Agency for Legislative Initiatives, the Reform Support Network, and the Public Assembly of Ukraine with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation. The project team expresses its special gratitude to all experts who participated in the first and second polling stages. SECTION І. LOCAL ELECTIONS 2010: NATIONAL TRENDS Author: Olena Chebanenko. Agency for Legislative Initiatives In 2010, it was for the first time in Ukraine that local elections were based on a mixed election system established by the new legislation. In view of varied assessments of the renewed legal regulation by experts and politicians, as well as the recent change of leadership