Oksana Tomchuk: Headquarters of two rival candidates are preparing for buying votes at by-election in Dnipro

At least two parliamentary candidates’ election headquarters at by-election in the 27^th district (Dnipro) are developing schemes for buying votes. The parliamentary candidate from UKROP, the lawyer Oksana Tomchuk said it on the air of “1 + 1” TV channel in the program “Right to Rule”.

“In Dnipro the election headquarters of at least two of my main competitors are creating the structure for direct vote buying, which is subject to criminal responsibility. Votes are just bought – for 1.5 thousand hryvnias per vote,” said Oksana Tomchuk.

The human rights activist has compared this technology to the methods that were used in the notorious 205^th district in Chernihiv. According to the UKROP candidate, the main problem of pre-election campaigns in Ukraine is that there are no responsibility for violations of election laws and no mechanisms for withdrawing candidates from registration in case of vote buying. “These problems have been existing for years and have not been solved, because this (vote buying and other violations – Ed.) is the main election instrument,” said Oksana Tomchuk.

The UKROP candidate has stated that she will give information concerning bribery of voters to the police and hopes for investigation of these facts. She has also recalled that there are several dummy candidates in her constituency, in particular – three dubbing self-nominated candidates with the name of Oksana Tomchuk. At the same time she has stressed that her campaign headquarters did not violate election laws: “We did not use the technology of dummy candidates registration, this is my conscious decision. We have no violations in this district. We do not use administrative resources despite the fact that the Mayor supports me: he does not walk with me arm-in-arm, he does not make state employees rally in my support and he does not influence the campaign. It seems normal to me because we have been fighting for it.”

It is to be recalled, according to the polls, among three leaders of the election race in Dnipro are Zagid Krasnov, Oksana Tomchuk and Tetiana Rychkova.