DEMOCRACY IN UKRAINE

First light in Dnipropetrovsk

Standing in the passageway of a Ukrainian sleeper car, Irena Kovalenko, Mike Getto and I were getting acquainted. Irena is our interpreter in Dnipropetrovsk. I've described Mike in a previous post. He and Irena have worked together before during the presidential election of 2004. I'm getting to know both for the first time.

Irena is first-class all the way. She speaks Ukrainian, Russian, English and Japanese. She lives in Kyiv and works for a Dnipropetrovsk-based chemical company. She's very smart and pretty as all Ukraine.

Our train pulled out of the Kyiv station at 11:30 p.m. We talked politics and watched the city lights give way to total darkness over the course of another hour.

One last cup of tea was issued by the train attendants. We sipped, talked and stared into the passing night for another half hour and then we came to our senses. We would arrive at our destination in just six hours. Better hit the pillows or we'll be sorry when we the train stops.

We each had a whole sleeping car to ourselves. It took me five minutes and I was out cold. Next thing I see is the golden start of a low Ukrainain sunrise glistening off the frost-coated landscape whizzing past my window.

At the station we were greeted by Vecherslav Sergeev. He goes by "Slava."

He's a Ukrainain who works for IRI in Dnipropetrovsk. He'll be our driver, and our advance team. He'll get us where we need to be, set up meetings and set up more while we're working our way through our schedule.

We checked into our hotel, regrouped after an hour, had breakfast then headed to our first meeting with the head of the regional election commission.

She's an attractive, very professional and authoritative-looking law professor who says she knows the election law well, but admits it's complicated. She tells us of some concerns she has about the staffing of the polling centers. We were briefed about this exact issue by IRI staff on Thursday.

There are 148 polling stations in her jurisdiction. Of the 46 political parties participating in this election, only nine supplied her with people to run the polls and serve as election commissioners at each polling station (similar to election judges in Colorado).

Worse, some of these people are backing out of their commitments today — the day before the election. I ask why.

"They didn't get enough training," she says. "Today they're realizing they don't have the experience to do it. So they just call and say they're not coming." If a sufficient number of election commissioners don't show up, it is possible that the election results at that polling station can be nullified.

Whether this really materializes into a problem is for us to determine tomorrow. But, for now, this discussion is a useful advisory as to what we will watch for when Ukrainians start casting votes.

She also describes an issue involving mobile ballot boxes. Rather than sending in an absentee ballot like in the US, Ukrainian law actually calls for bringing the ballot box to the residence of people who can't make it to the polls on Election Day.

Here's the hitch, to qualify for voting at home (or from your hospital bed, etc.) you have to send in a certificate from a doctor validating you're not ambulatory. Many people who have requested a visit from the mobile ballot box brigade can't get such a certificate.

Why? Because Ukrainian doctors don't issue them, we're told. We'll keep our eyes on this issue tomorrow, too.

Next, we drove to the headquarters of local captains of various political parties: Party of Regions, Socialist Party and Ne Tak. All officials tell us they share the same concerns as our regional election commission head from this morning.

We took a long lunch to map out our plans for tomorrow then headed to a cafe to meet with Vadim Hermanovych the political reporter with the "Evening Dnipir" newspaper. We're told he's the most respected political journalist in the region. He says freedom of the press has improved much since the last election.

He says most of his readers are sophisticated voters and ready to make good decisions tomorrow. Still, he says the media won't be entirely free and effective here until media outlets are fully self-sufficient generating enough advertising revenue to stay in business and eventually render state-run and party-run publications obsolete.

He gave us some tips on a few other potential voting problems. We took careful notes and we'll put his advice to good use tomorrow.

Next, we stopped into an Internet cafe. Most Ukrainians don't have their own computers, but lots of them use Internet cafes. It's my first time in such a place. The place is busy, full of young people ranging from their teens to an old guy I can see across the room from my place here at terminal #12.

Tomorrow is Election Day. We want to be at our first polling station at about 6:30 a.m. We all want to get to bed early tonight.

Slava is tracking down my one request — to get to Mass at a Catholic Church either tonight or tomorrow. Slava tells me this might be difficult. He's lived here all his life and can't recall ever seeing a Catholic Church.

Despite there being beautiful churches with big shiny onion domes all over this city, there aren't many Roman Catholics who live here. Mike and I are both Catholic and it's Lent. If there's a Mass around here, we intend to find it and get there.

I'll report throughout the day tomorrow on the progress of the election from my Blackbery. On behalf of about 75 of my new Ukrainian friends here at the Internet Cafe in beautiful downtown Dnipropetrovsk — especially Irena, Slava and Mike — good night.

Former U.S. Congressman Bob Schaffer, a member of the Colorado State Board of Education, is an election observer for the Parliamentary elections in Ukraine. The election is coming up this Sunday, March 26.