Ukrainian citizens to elect new parliament on Sunday
The elections to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine will be held on October 28.
They are conducted under a mixed system, with 225 MPs elected on party lists and 225 in single-seat constituencies (the elections in 2007 were held under a proportional system). Parliamentary candidates run in single-seat constituencies either from parties or through self-nomination. The election threshold for parties on party lists in these elections is 5%. The parliamentary elections were last held under a mixed system in 2002, and the threshold was 4%.
Unlike all previous parliamentary elections, single-seat candidates were registered by the Central Election Commission (CEC), rather than district commissions. In addition, the CEC also considered complaints against the actions of single-seat candidates and made warnings to individual candidates for violations they committed. At the same time, the current version of the law on parliamentary elections does not envisage the withdrawal of registrations of single-seat candidates and parties, regardless of the number of warnings.
In general, the CEC registered lists of candidates from 22 parties and 3,130 candidates running for MP in single-seat constituencies. However, then the Sobor Party later decided to withdraw itself from registration in the elections in multi-member nationwide constituencies, and precinct commissions will now have to the put "Eliminated" stamps in ballots against the name of this party. In addition, the CEC withdrew the registration of 476 single-seat candidates, including two under court rulings, one in connection with a conviction, and another in connection with his death.
The CEC also decided to reprint ballots in 20 single-seat constituencies, and instructed district commissions to put the Eliminated stamps against the names of de-registered candidates in 74 constituencies. Thus, 2,654 candidates are running for MP in single-seat constituencies, including 1,502 nominated by parties and 1,152 self-nominees.
It was necessary to submit a deposit of UAH 13,224 to register a single-seat candidate and UAH 2.204 million to register a party list. The deposit is not returned in the case of de-registration or loss in the elections.
The CEC created 225 single-seat constituencies in the country, and the distribution of their number was somewhat different from that in the parliamentary elections in 2002. The CEC also created 33,769 polling stations, including 32,188 ordinary stations, 1,465 special stations (in hospitals and prisons, on ships that will sail under Ukraine's national flag on Election Day, and at the polar station), and 116 stations in 77 countries. In contrast to the previous elections, in accordance with the law, election districts and polling stations will now operate on a permanent basis.
The law initially envisaged that foreign polling stations should be subordinated to constituencies in Kyiv, but the Constitutional Court declared this provision unconstitutional. As a result, Ukrainian voters living abroad will vote only for party lists.
The CEC formed 225 district election commissions. Following the draw, representatives of two political parties – UDAR and Svoboda, which have every chance of winning seats in parliament, received no quota to delegate their representatives to district commissions, while a number of virtually unknown parties got the right to include their representatives in all 225 district commissions. The opposition described these parties as "technical" and accused the head of the electoral headquarters of the Regions Party, Andriy Kliuyev, of being involved in the participation in the elections of 49 parties of this kind out of the 87 participating in the elections. There was almost the same situation with the formation by district commissions of precinct election commissions.
According to the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, as a result, the composition of district and precinct commission was on average 50% updated across Ukraine, because initially "technical" parties and single-seat candidates submitted the nominations of completely random people, some of whom did not even know about it.
The CEC rejected any accusations of being biased during the formation of district commissions, explaining the situation by the fact that under the law, the right to include representatives in election commissions is enjoyed, apart from parliamentary factions, by all parties participating in the elections, and such parties are those that nominated at least one candidate in a single-seat constituency. Such a right was used by 82 of 87 parties, and the CEC was obliged to adopt such a procedure, when the draw to determine the quotas of parties was conducted immediately for all 225 districts, rather than each district separately, which would take more time than allowed by the law. The CEC was obliged to approve a similar procedure of the draw for the formation of precinct commissions.
UAH 1.2 billion is envisaged in the state budget for the holding of the elections. Almost before the start of the parliamentary election campaign, the parliamentary majority unexpectedly passed a law on the organization of election surveillance foreseeing the installation of Web cameras at all polling stations and allocated UAH 993.6 million for this purpose. Under the law, the contractor was selected on a non-competitive basis, and it was JSC Sitronics Information Technologies Ukraine, which is a division of the well-known Russian company that equipped all polling stations in the last presidential elections in Russia with Web cameras.
The voting for the election of people's deputies of Ukraine will be held on October 28 from 0800 to 2000. As of April 9, the number of voters in Ukraine was 36,253,147 people.
During the elections, in a number of districts voters began to massively change their temporary place of voting without changing their place of residence, which experts linked to the intentions of concrete candidates to secure a victory at the expense of the votes of these citizens. The CEC was obliged to ban voters from changing their place of voting outside one district, apart from members of district and precinct election commissions.
The CEC is to announce the official election results by November 12 and publish them in the Holos Ukrainy and Uriadovy Kurier official newspapers no later than five days after the decision on the voting results, i.e. no later than November 17.
The CEC registered nearly 3,800 international official observers who will monitor the parliamentary elections in Ukraine, most of them from the OSCE/ODIHR and the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly (738 people).
In accordance with current law, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and former Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko, who are serving their prison terms, will not be able to participate in the elections. International organizations believe that criminal cases opened against Tymoshenko and Lutsenko are politically motivated and have already stated that the parliamentary elections in Ukraine will not be recognized as democratic if these opposition representatives do not participate in them.
According to sociological surveys, the Regions Party, the Batkivschyna United Opposition, Vitali Klitschko's UDAR Party and the Communist Party of Ukraine will win seats in parliament on party lists. Natalia Korolevska's Ukraine-Forward! Party and Svoboda also could overcome the 5% election threshold.
The current wording of the Constitution of Ukraine does not contain a demand for the mandatory inclusion of MPs in the faction of the party that nominated them for MP. In additional, it is not envisaged that the Cabinet of Ministers has to resign after the election of a new composition of the Verkhovna Rada.
The Verkhovna Rada of the seventh convocation is scheduled to convene for its first session on December 17.