Ukraine vote falls short of democratic standards: OSCE

[maddezmom]

KIEV (AFP) - The Organization for Security and Cooperation (news - web sites) in Europe said Ukraine's crucial runoff presidential vote fell short of international democratic standards.


"The second round of the Ukrainian presidential election does not meet a considerable number of OSCE (news - web sites) conditions and Council of Europe and other European standards for democratic elections," said Bruce George, the chief of the OSCE observer mission.


The OSCE criticized the Ukrainian government for requiring some state employees "under duress" to acquire and handover to their superiors absentee ballots.


Observers have reported that these ballots were collected at the workplace "on an organized basis," George said.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1512&ncid=732&e=2&u=/afp/20041122/wl_afp/ukraine_vote_observers

[MelissaB]

1. I was listening to NPR

while I was getting ready this morning. There are protests because the exit polls don't match the result. Does this sound familiar?

Next question with tin foil hat firmly in place:
How do they vote and how are they counted?


(I'm off to work where this site is blocked. :( )

[AllegroRondo]

2. I heard the same story this morning

And it really pissed me off that NPR is giving more coverage to the election fraud in Ukraine than to the fraud here.

[TheLastMohican]

3. They are counted through ballot boxes

if I understand your question correctly. The old style of throuwing paper ballots into the transparent voting booths.
The elections are rigged, there are now over 100k people in the central in Kiev and Yushenko, the opposition leader, is calling for a a nation-wide strike. He is greatly supported in Ukraine and it is definetely that he had won the elections. But the government of bandits has nowhere to run and will not go down easily.

[TahitiNut]

4. "where this site is blocked"??

You can probably web surf through a proxy/anonymizer.

Here's just one ...
http://www.the-cloak.com/anonymous-surfing-home.html

Here's a list ...
http://www.anonymitychecker.com/page1.html

[Nicholas_J]

5. Well, I guess this must have been one of the disagreements

That Bush has recently had with Putin. I understand that in the past few days a state dinner with Putin was canceled as a reult of an argument between Bush and Putin.

To be honnest, I believe that the Ukrainians are better off with the Russian allance than a pro-western alliance. The Ukraine has been under the historical thumb of Russia for centuries, but they have always gotten the wrong end of the stick when they allied themselves with the west. Already they are getting screwed by American energy corporations, with U.S. energy companies being the major business partners with a Bulgarian/Ukranian mafia which is the majority shareholder of the joint oil/natural gas cartel which is draining a fortune from these countries. Journalist in these countries who try to bring this up end up floating in the Danube. And they are backing the pro western candidate.

[fedsron2us]

8. There are no good guys here

This is essentially a conflict between Putin backed crooks and Bush backed crooks. To see how it might pan out check out how the Georgian press are now enjoying 'Western' style freedoms under their 'liberal' pro-Washington government

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/118097/1/.html

[maddezmom]

6. Ukraine Set to Name PM President, Regions Rebel-Reuters

KIEV (Reuters) - More than 100,000 Ukrainians poured into the streets of their capital on Monday to protest over the result of a presidential election they say was stolen by backers of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich.


The ex-Soviet state's nationalist western regions also rebelled, saying they would recognize only liberal rival Viktor Yushchenko as the rightful president.


Anger erupted among supporters of Yushchenko, a West-leaning liberal, after figures by electoral authorities showed Yanukovich, the establishment candidate backed by Moscow, winning with almost all the votes counted.


Ukraine's security bodies warned they would put down any lawlessness "quickly and firmly."


more: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=586&ncid=586&e=6&u=/nm/20041122/wl_nm/ukraine_dc

[proudbluestater]

7. OSCE also monitored OUR elections. Where is the news?

I heard on Democracy Now that this group was in the US. They pronounced our elections, as "worse than Serbia." Didn't see Yahoo report that.