The European Partnership for Democracy is organising a visit for two members of Civic Network OPORA to Brussels next week. The visit is in the context of an EU-financed project that deals with the elections in Ukraine (“European practices and standards for Ukrainian elections”).
OPORA conducted monitoring activities during the elections on the 26th October 2014 and reports that the voting process in the early parliamentary elections in Ukraine was regular and without incidents that could cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election process. Taking into consideration the military operations in the eastern part of the country, 51.2% voter turnout (according to the results of parallel vote tabulation conducted by OPORA, margin of error <1.9%) is quite high, and shows that citizens are interested in the political process. The absolute majority of candidates had equal opportunity. However, campaigning in some districts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts was complicated by activities of illegal armed groups, supported by the regular army of the Russian Federation.
We cannot say that the campaign was held freely on all territory of Ukraine. OPORA considers the decision of the CEC not to conduct voting in 15 single-mandate majoritarian election district (9 in Donetsk oblast, 6 in Luhansk oblast) reasonable. As long as the Ukrainian government has no control over these territories, conducting a legitimate electoral process there remains impossible.
To see the entirety of the report of the voting process in English, please click here.
