The organization of the election process is in jeopardy in some merged territorial communities due to members of the district election commissions not fulfilling their duties, the Central Election Commission (CEC) said.

"As it is known, the Central Election Commission has appointed the first elections of deputies of rural, settlement, and town councils of the merged territorial communities and the corresponding rural, settlement, and town councils, as well as additional elections of deputies of rural and settlement councils on December 22 and December 29, 2019," the press service of the CEC reported.

However, the Commission claims that in some merged territorial communities, the organization of the electoral process was in jeopardy due to the evasion of certain members of district election commissions from fulfilling their duties.

"In some district election commissions, only about 60 percent of the members of the formed number of commissions exercise their powers. In addition, in separate commissions, their senior staff also evades their duties.

"Therefore, the CEC calls on political parties to understand and take responsibility for these problems, once again carefully review the members of the commissions that they submitted to their composition, and to influence the remediation of the situation as soon as possible so that the district election commissions are able to form the relevant territorial and precinct election commissions in time," it says.

The CEC also reminded the members of election commissions that criminal liability is provided for them for evading the exercise of their powers in accordance with Article 157 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

According to the calendar plans of the main organizational measures for the preparation and conduct of these elections, the district election commissions for local elections are obliged to form the composition of rural, settlement, and town election commissions, respectively, until November 9 and November 16, 2019. Also, these district election commissions must form precinct election commissions for the relevant elections until December 6 and December 13 inclusively.