Two weeks after the Oct. 28 parliamentary election, Ukraine’s Central Election Commission is still struggling to finish the vote count and determine the election results by the Nov. 12 deadline.
While the possibility of a repeat vote in several constituencies looks inevitable, it is still unclear which districts exactly will undergo re-runs and when they’ll take place.
Half of Ukraine’s 450-seat parliament is elected through a closed party list. The other 225 lawmakers are elected in single-mandate constituencies throughout the country.
Following the CEC’s resolution on the impossibility of determining the results in five single mandate constituencies due to alleged fraud, Ukraine’s parliament recommended the permanent election body to hold new elections there.
Yet the opposition claims its candidates won in these districts and has taken the CEC to court, trying to convince the body to acknowledge such results and not hold a new vote.
The CEC says they can’t decide or schedule any re-vote before parliament amends the election law to specify the grounds for repeat elections, which it says is currently absent in the legislation.
“Now the ball is in the parliament’s court. Lawmakers have to amend the existing election legislation and outline grounds for a new election in order to allow us to take a decision on new elections in certain constituencies,” Andriy Mahera, deputy head of the CEC, told the Kyiv Post.
He believes the new parliament would still be legitimate with 445 out of 450 new lawmakers taking their oath, but thinks the legislation will be changed.
“The current situation is beyond the legal framework,” said Denys Kovryzhenko, a legal adviser at International Foundation for Electoral Systems, an election think tank.
In his opinion, the new elections in some constituencies could take place next year at the earliest.
CEC head Volodymyr Shapoval believes that to spearhead the legislative process, parliament may call an emergency parliamentary session.
Shapoval says the re-vote in some districts would be possible in March. According to him, scheduling it for March will help finance the election, since next year’s budget has yet to be adopted.
But Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said that country’s budget lacked the money for repeat elections, which could pose a “direct threat for democracy in Ukraine.”
“Where is a guarantee that opponents will like the results of the repeat votes? Where is a guarantee that they won’t have a desire (to hold repeat elections) for a third or fourth time?” he said at a Nov. 7 government meeting.
The ruling pro-presidential Party of Regions say they have not discussed the issue yet, but do not rule out the possibility of adopting the needed amendments in the parliament.
“But these amendments would have to be adopted in consensus with the opposition, so that we are not blamed for approving legislation allegedly in order to get our candidates elected,” said Mykhaylo Chechetov, a Party of Regions lawmaker.
In its resolution adopted earlier this week the CEC outlined five constituencies – in Kyiv Oblast (94), Mykolayiv Oblast (132), Cherkasy Oblast (194, 197), and in the city of Kyiv (223) – where a new vote is needed.
Election officials believe it is impossible to determine the vote results, due to alleged tampering with the vote count and vote tabulation.
These are the hottest constituencies where the fiercest battles between government-friendly and opposition candidates took place.
Opposition candidates and the Batkivshchyna Party are challenging the CEC’s decision in court by arguing that it is possible to determine the vote results based on certain district election commission protocols, and when this is impossible, based on election protocols from precinct election commissions.
Meanwhile, imprisoned former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko also said she is against holding repeat elections in disputed single-seat constituencies.
She called on Ukrainians to not recognize the election results at all, and went on hunger strike on Oct. 29.
According to the opposition’s parallel vote count, their candidates won in the disputed constituencies.
“The opposition has protocols with original signatures and stamps, with credible results. I’m asking the opposition to demand that the vote count on these protocols (be recognized), and do not give a second chance to corrupt officials and forgers to sneer at the people’s choice. People have already made their choice in these districts,” reads Tymoshenko’s statement issued on Nov. 7.
At the same time Vitali Klitschko’s Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reforms Party, called for a whole new general election, claiming that falsification occurred in all constituencies throughout the nation.
But Klitschko wants a new national election only after the adoption of a new election law that would require all 450 members to be elected nationally though a proportional vote from an open party list.
Kyiv Post staff writer Yuriy Onyshkiv can be reached at [email protected]. Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at [email protected]
