Does Ukrainian President Poroshenko plan to rig the election?
The election team of incumbent President Poroshenko is accused of using state funds to fraudulently gain an additional 10% of the vote.
TASS news agency on February 21 quoted information from the Ukrainian news site Strana saying that the campaign team of incumbent President Petro Poroshenko had planned to cheat the upcoming presidential election on a large scale.
A journalistic investigation conducted by interviewing members of Poroshenko's campaign team and local officials showed that the election fraud scheme called "Setka" would be carried out to reach every citizen of the country, spreading to the smallest settlements.
"Members of Poroshenko's election team hope that this program will allow the incumbent president to gain an additional 7-10% of votes, provided that voter turnout reaches 60%. It is worth noting that the Setka program will be financed by the budget, that is, by taxpayers," Strana wrote.
 |
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Photo: Sputnik |
According to the participants, the campaign took place in several stages. In the first stage, Poroshenko's campaigners conducted large-scale polls to identify potential supporters of the president.
In the second stage, the election team will seek to maintain contact with this group of people to ensure their continued support for presidential candidate Poroshenko.
The third stage is crucial when the President's local supporters receive financial support. That is, when local and regional governments approve special social assistance programs, they will choose simple criteria to make it easy to implement and quickly approved for spending.
According to an investigation by a group of Ukrainian reporters, the amount of money that Setka members will receive ranges from 50 million to 90 million hryvnias (about 1,850 - 3,300 USD) depending on the region.
Strana news agency said that this is the first time in the history of Ukraine that a President has used state funds to campaign. Meanwhile, according to TASS's research, Ukraine's leading polling organizations all support President Poroshenko. Therefore, the data they reflect does not always reflect the true picture.
"The top five polling companies in Ukraine are cooperating with the Poroshenko administration and the figures they provide only show the general trend."
According to Mr Bondarenko, the above polling companies are currently "adding a few percentage points to Poroshenko's approval rating and subtracting the same number from his rival candidate Yulia Timoshenko".
“I believe that Poroshenko will be leading in the polls a few weeks before the election, so these ratings will also be used to justify future manipulations by the Poroshenko administration,” Bondarenko concluded.
Poroshenko has risen to second place in recent polls, while former blond Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has fallen behind. Comedian Vladimir Zelensky leads the race with 17.5% of voters ready to vote. Poroshenko is second with 13.1%, while Batkivshchina (Fatherland) Party leader Yulia Tymoshenko is third (11.5%).
