Democracy in Ukraine Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Democracy in Ukraine - Essay Example not stealing from the state coffers and protecting favored oligarchs, but actually representing the people who elected them. For most people, this is a first taste of real self- determination" (Paton) In other democracies (such as the United States) are the chances of voter fraud minimized by the old established checks and balances " the vote fraud in (circa 2004) November's Ukrainian election, which denied Yuschenko his victory, was no different than the vote fraud in the United States election that same month, which denied John Kerry his victory; in both cases, there was a major discrepancy between exit polls and the official count. The exit polls in the United States were off by less than 2%. This discrepancy can largely be explained by exit pollsters acknowledged over sampling of women voters, new rules that limit nonvoters proximity to polling places, and the apparent high level of interview cooperation by Kerry supporters than by Bush advocates. The difference between exit polls and the official count in the Ukraine, by contrast, was more than 14%, and considerable evidence suggests that the Kiev government tampered with the results. For example in the Donestk region, officials claimed that Yushchenko won by less than 3% of the vote. International observers, also reported widespread intimidation of election monitors, ballot stuffing, multiple voting, and government pressuring of voters" (Zunes). In the United States the concept of free and fair elections may in some situations be viewed only as the ideal, but the electorate and the candidates have a target to aim for,... The Ukrainian media is state controlled and its primary thrust leading up to the election was the promotion of pro-government candidates. Once the government learned who the opposition candidates were, government controlled thugs went about the business of disrupting opposition campaign activity and were also engaged in act of violence. â€Å"Mykota Shkribliak, a leading opposition politician was murdered in 2002, and journalists who reported on corruption or criticized government policies were subjected to particularly serious harassment and violence. The judiciary in the Ukraine is notoriously inefficient and subject to corruption. It is clear that emerging or newdemocracies are beset with a number of the same common problems. In Czechoslovakia, Petr Cibulka is a five time political prisoner and has done time in the toughest communist prison camps in Czechoslovakia repeatedly between 1979 and 1989, he was jailed and in 1979 he conducted a 31-day hunger strike. In 1991 Cibulka began publishing his paper, Uncensored News, which took a hard line opposition stand against the official information blockade organized by the communists through their â€Å"soft† control of the mass media. In 1992 Mr. Cibulka acquired and published data fromsecret police files, including the names of 200,000 communist spies and collaborators.In April 2005 Mr. Cibulka was interviewed concerning his experiences and perceptions about the current state of democracy in Czechoslovakia. One of the questions posed to him was.