As far as elections are concerned, Donetsk is a specific region. If, during the last presidential election campaign, posters depicting [Socialist Party leader] Oleksandr Moroz were automatically ripped down and observers had their ribs broken even in polling stations, one can imagine how much the authorities wanted to get the right result. But the most interesting thing is how Donetsk's "progressive experience" as a rule quickly spreads to other Regions, which was fully shown by the results of the referendum "at the people's initiative" [giving wider powers to President Leonid Kuchma]. So this piece is not a criticism of the Donetsk authorities the authorities are the way we allow them to be. It is more an attempt to get rid of the illusions of the oppositionists who see life through the windows of their foreign cars with Kiev number plates, and research into the election techniques being actively used by the authorities in this election campaign. Moreover, in many cases they do not even break the law on elections, which is typical of the law itself, those who passed it and the country's political institutions that are meant to implement it.

Stalin is credited with saying that elections are not won by the person who gets the votes, but by the person whose people count them. It seemed as if the new election law created equal opportunities for election participants for representation in the commissions. But in reality it turns out that Ukrainian parties are not yet prepared, not just for a purely proportional system, but even for the current mixed one. Because the parties in Kiev and the parties in the regions are two very different things, as they say in Odessa. That is the only way to explain the fact that the Donetsk Regional organization of the Liberal Party of Ukraine, which is part of Our Ukraine [election bloc led by former Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko], is also a member of the alliance headed by Yanukovych, For Unity, Accord and Revival, which has publicly declared its support for the [pro-government] For a United Ukraine bloc. Other parties that compete with For a United Ukraine are also members of this alliance. The case of the Liberals is indicative for another reason the fact that they are headed by the head of the directorate for internal policy of the Regional administration, Demydko, who, simply because he is subordinate to the governor who declared his support for Lytvyn's bloc [For a United Ukraine], should work for that bloc. And it seems that that is what he is doing.

According to the leader of the local Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists [a party in the Our Ukraine bloc], Mariya Oliynyk, the Liberals have not affixed their seal to a single statement to the courts protesting against the refusal to register the bloc for the elections to local councils. They simply refused. Saying that Our Ukraine's campaign should be positive. It is also interesting that not one of the ten people proposed by the Congress for the constituency commissions was chosen. What is more, Mariya Oliynyk said: "We had a coordination council, and the deputy chairwoman of the People's Movement of Ukraine [PMU] said that of the 22 people, 10 are PMU members and 12 were people suggested by the authorities. So the commission is formed supposedly from party representatives, but they are far removed from the parties. As a rule, they were proposed by the authorities, and that complicates work considerably." Mariya Oliynyk is sure that the authorities found out which parties had no structures and then proposed their own people to them.

The fact that Mariya Oliynyk is right was confirmed to me by the leader of one of the district organizations of the Yabluko party. When he went to the internal policy department of the district administration, they told him straight: "You are not an anti-presidential party, here's your list." To the credit of Yabluko, they refused the deal. But clearly not all parties could stand up to that. At least, the leader of the Yenakiyeve town organization of the Reforms and Order party [RO], Iryna Chertovska, was very surprised to see on the list of the electoral commission of constituency No 50 representatives of the RO of whom she had never heard, although the local party organization had given its party nominations to the leadership of the Regional organization... [newspaper ellipsis]

There are masses of such examples. There are cases where, on representations from [former Deputy Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko-led party] Motherland (you don't get much more oppositionist than that), people from the Party of Regions have got on to the commission. But if all that can be written down to dirty tricks and weak party structures, there are also examples of direct breaches of the law. The Socialist Party Regional committee adopted a statement on 29 January indicating to [Central Electoral Commission Chairman Mykhaylo] Ryabets that in five constituency commissions in the Region, two out of three heads are representatives of parties belonging to For a United Ukraine.

The situation with the elections to the Regional council is even more blatant. There, of the 15 people approved by a session of the Regional council to serve on the Regional electoral commission, 12 represent parties belonging to the alliance For Unity, Accord and Revival that has declared its support for the bloc For a United Ukraine. One of them is from the Communist Party, whose deputies once voted for the illegal combination of Yanukovych's positions as head of the administration and chairman of the Regional council. And two represent workforces. Moreover, the chairman and secretary of the commission were members of the Regional commission for the April referendum [giving greater presidential powers], which, for me, is sufficiently indicative.

There are over 35 candidates registered in some constituencies in Donetsk Region. Furthermore there are always two or three times more independents than candidates from blocs and parties. You get the impression that the people (in a mining area!) have nothing better to do with their money than lay it out as election deposits. Moreover, it is precisely the most "wealthy" pensioners and state employees that are concerned with how to spend their hard-earned money. Even stranger is the mass independent candidacies of members of the Party of Regions and other parties within For a United Ukraine in constituencies where agreed candidates from the bloc are already standing.

For example, in Donetsk constituency No 45, where one of the leaders of the Party of Regions [PR] is standing, the mayor of the miners' capital, [Donetsk mayor Volodymyr] Rybak, another six members of the Party of Regions have also put themselves forward, as have three state employees, two of whom are kindergarten teachers, and nine pensioners and unemployed people... [newspaper ellipsis] Unaffiliated, of course, with more money than sense. But where is the party discipline of the PR, standing against their party leader?

Candidate Yakovlev tried to find an answer to this question. He started calling round his colleagues to explain the seriousness of their intentions and possibility for cooperation. An interesting conversation ensued with a kindergarten teacher. Having listened to the essence of the question, she asked us to wait. Then the receiver was taken by the kindergarten head, who turned out to be the candidate's agent, but who refused to speak about the essence of the matter.

But the explanation is simple. Every candidate has the right to his own representative in the constituency commissions. Sham candidates sham commission members. More accurately, real ones, but working not for their candidate, but for whoever hired them and paid the candidate's deposit... [newspaper ellipsis] It is interesting that in constituencies where candidates of the authorities (that is how For a United Ukraine describes itself) are clearly weak, members of the PR and their bloc colleagues are especially active. For example, in constituency No 51, where the hero of programmes by the murdered journalist [Ihor] Oleksandrov is standing, the former Kramatorsk organized crime department officer [Oleh] Solodun, of the 17 registered candidates six are PR members. In constituency No 50, where entrepreneur Kulishov, independent of the authorities, and successful despite them, has a real chance, there are also six PR volunteers registered among the 15 candidates. And that is without counting the Liberals also standing in these constituencies.

On 11 February, replying to a question about clone candidates, Viktor Yanukovych said that "this is part of the dirty public-relations tricks". And he said that he would not allow people in Donetsk Region to be subjected to all sorts of filth and strife. A normal reaction from a normal person. But the fact that the clones have put themselves forward in precisely those constituencies where there are serious opponents to For a United Ukraine placemen makes it possible to surmise that not all supporters of the bloc are as righteous as the governor. For example, besides the name of the above Oleh Solodun, who, along with another former organized crime department officer, Mykhaylo Serbin, accused his police command of a number of serious crimes, on the list there will also be the name of another Solodun, also called Oleh, and even also a policemen. Only the latter is not a former policeman, but an actual one, acting on orders. And more interesting still, he works in the investigation department of Makiyivka, which is nowhere near constituency No 51.

Still more interesting is constituency No 41 in Donetsk. There the two main rivals will be women. One is a friend of [president's wife] Lyudmyla Kuchma, a former health minister and current MP, Raisa Bohatyryova. The other is her parliamentary colleague, a member of the Communist Party of Ukraine, Lyubov Fedorenko. Let us discount the pensioners, medics and a 22-year-old student of the internal affairs institute that have put themselves forward and are registered in the constituency. But the presence, apart from Fedorenko, of two other women with the same surname and one named Fedorchenko speaks for itself. What is more, one of the Fedorenkos is a teacher at that very same Donetsk internal affairs institute... [newspaper ellipsis]

A well-known editor of a district newspaper has recounted how at a Regional council seminar, editors were taught methods allowing them not to publish material from opponents of For a United Ukraine. Here are nine of the methods:

Delay the process of concluding contracts.

Offer the client the least-read place in the paper. Spoil the text and photographs.

Refer to the paper's heavy workload until after the elections. Conclude contracts not with election agents, but with the candidates themselves, who do not always have the time for that.

Offer the client to publish material in a separate supplement. Avoid meetings with the client, referring to excessive workload.

Demand an estimate of the candidate's election fund spending and prove that he is overspending.

When checking the client's documents, find elements of inexactitude and refuse to address the matter.

Judging by information from representatives of various election headquarters in the Region, they have already come up against just such a pattern of refusal from the editorial boards of the local mass media.

Last Thursday [14 February] at a session of the Donetsk press club, where leaders of the highest-rated parties and blocs in the Donbas [coal mining region] were invited, I asked the head of For a United Ukraine's Regional headquarters, Serhiy Larin, why it was that his bloc had almost a monopoly presence in the regional media, while other parties were absent. Mr Larin started answering not very intelligibly that they had concluded contracts with all the mass media in the Region, "but there is an advertising campaign and there are information reasons... [newspaper ellipsis]" Is an opinion poll of Donetsk residents in which by no means mere passers-by say what they are expecting from the coming to power of candidates of For a United Ukraine an information reason? Or a telegram from the Dnipropetrovsk governor to the Donetsk governor congratulating him on the occasion of presenting the bloc of the authorities? Nevertheless, court newspapers and the Ukrainian Radio and TV company are actively "treating" their audience to such things. An elementary monitoring of the mass media is sufficient to understand who in the Donbas, as its motto says, is "first among equals". Moreover, knowing the prices for advertising that are being asked of other election participants, for whom information reasons simply do not exist, it is hard to imagine how much election funds are needed to pay for a contract with all the mass media of the Region.

There is also a curious situation regarding the For a United Ukraine banners that are hanging all over Donetsk. The question was raised at the press club about who was paying for them.

The following dialogue ensued between journalists and Larin: "The banners... [newspaper ellipsis] were not paid for by the headquarters. The election headquarters did not pay for them... [newspaper ellipsis] Be more specific."

"Who paid for the banners?"

"All advertising in Donetsk and Donetsk Region is paid for by the election headquarters."

"So these banners were also paid for by you?"

"Yes, probably."

"Probably, or were they paid for?"

"They were all paid for."

Representatives of other parties just smiled knowingly. Iryna Onyshchenko, a candidate from the Winter Generation Team bloc, could not contain herself. "I have been here four days (in the Region author)," she said, "and almost every day I come up against the fact that people who had agreements on providing me with opportunities for meetings say: `We really want to listen to you, but we have a direct order not to allow anyone except For a United Ukraine candidates. We don't want to lose our jobs.' The locals do not even notice such things now."

Serhiy Larin declared that his bloc intended to take up to 80 per cent of the vote in the Region. Quite possibly.

Trnslated by BBC Monitoring © BBC.