You're reading: Watchdog slams changes to Ukrainian election law

The International Foundation for Electoral Systems, a global election watchdog, has slammed changes parliament has made to Ukraine's election legislation, saying the amendments were "inconsistent with international standards."

According to the amendments
to the law, which was signed by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Feb. 25,
political parties will be allowed to exclude lawmaker candidates from their
party lists immediately after elections.

“According to the
law, from now on it is the parties, not the voters, who will decide who is elected
under the party lists. Candidates can be crossed out from a list at any time
once the election results are officially published by the Central Election
Commission,” reads an official statement posted on the IFES’s Facebook page.

The International
Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) is a global organization that supports the
right to free and fair elections in more than 140 countries around the world.

The IFES said the
adopted law violates the principle of legal certainty, “can open the door to
political corruption, and would have a negative impact on internal party
democracy, because candidates who do not share the views of the party
leadership can be excluded from the party lists after the elections.”

The law, No. 3700 “On
changes to the law on the deputy election process that will allow the expelling
of deputy candidates from party lists in multi-mandate constituencies” was finally
approved by the parliament on Feb. 16 after hours of procedural tussles.

Lawmakers supporting
the bill made 18 attempts on Feb. 16 to have the law included on the agenda of the
parliament session before it was finally voted on.

Serhiy Leschenko, a reformist
lawmaker from the pro-presidential Bloc of Poroshenko Bloc, called the law “a bill
for the dictatorship of party chiefs,” saying it would allow party bosses “to
cleanse their party lists of unfavorable lawmaker candidates who are in line to
enter parliament.”

But Volodymyr
Fesenko, the head of the PENTA center of political research, told the Kyiv Post
that this “not so democratic law” would be in force only for the current
parliament.

“This parliament has
approved this law because of the increasing internal conflicts in all the
ruling parties. The old political alliances are in ruins. Who wants to see his
or her sponsor in the past, who is now an enemy, sitting next to him (in
parliament)?” Fesenko
said.

According to Fesenko current
lawmakers won’t be affected by the changes to the law – it only concerns new
candidates.

“When lawmakers like
(Mykola) Tomenko or Yegor Firsov and others decided to leave their faction (the
Bloc of Petro Poroshenko), they cleared places for the next candidates (on the
party lists). But some of these (candidates) have become extremely unfavorable to
the president’s party and the other forces that rule in parliament,” said
Fesenko.

Thirteen lawmakers
have already left the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko.

On Feb. 2 Leschenko
wrote on his Facebook page that the aim of the law was to get rid of Andriy
Bohdan, № 74 on Poroshenko’s party list and the next candidate
in line to enter parliament.

According to
Leschenko, Bohdan, who is now the defense lawyer for Hennady Korban, is a close
ally of Dnipropetrovsk oligarch Ihor Kolomoysky. Korban is currently facing
charges of kidnapping and money laundering.

“Bohdan, Kolomoysky’s
man, was included in Poroshenko’s Party list more than a year ago, when an
alliance with the Dnipropetrovsk oligarch was profitable for the president. Now there is war between them. So they will
do anything to expel Bohdan,” wrote Leschenko.

Fesenko partly
confirmed Leschenko’s claim.

“This law benefits at
least three political forces. (Oleh) Lyashko’s Radical Party and (Yulia) Tymoshenko’s
Batkivschyna Party also has some candidates who have no credibility. The leaders
want to have more control over the party lists,” said Fesenko.

According to the Rada
website, law No. 3700 was co-sponsored by Yury Lutsenko, the head of the Bloc
of Petro Poroshenko fraction, Yulia Tymoshenko, the leader of the Batkivschyna
Party, Oleh Lyashko, the head of the Radical Party, Samopomich Party faction
head Oleh Berezyuk, People’s Front faction head Maxym Burbak, and Radical Party
lawmaker Oleh Kuprienko.

Poroshenko signed the
law nine days after it was approved by the Rada and just a day it was sent to
him for signature. The swift approval of the law contrasts with other key legislation,
such as the law on the National Police of Ukraine, which the Rada approved on
July 2, 2015 but Poroshenko only signed in August, a month later.

According to the IFES,
the only other country in Europe that has introduced a “party-administered
mandate” is Serbia. The respective provision in the Serbian Parliamentary
Election Law was strongly criticized by the Venice Commission and the
Organization
for Security and Cooperation in Europe
s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. In particular, the Venice Commission
noted that “under proportional representation systems, the order of the list
usually determines the allocation of mandates; otherwise mandates are allocated
on the basis of preferential votes for candidates.”

Kyiv Post staff
writer
Veronika Melkozerova can be reached at
[email protected]