The local elections held in a number of Ukrainian regions on May 25 have received a positive assessment from the delegation monitors of the Council of Europe (CoE) congress for local elections monitoring.
The congress thinks that despite the difficult political situation
and organizational issues, this vote was an important positive step and
the CoE will welcome it if the Ukrainian authorities continue following
this path so that the next local elections are completely successful,
CoE delegation head Gudrun Mosler-Tornstrom said at a news conference in
Kyiv on Monday.
Monitors treated with understanding the fact that the elections were
carried out in an emergency situation for Ukraine and Europe, she said.
The complexity of the situation was always kept in mind while work
was carried out at around 120 polling stations, where local elections
were held in parallel with presidential elections, Mosler-Tornstrom
said.
CoE monitors said they positively assessed the bill on local
elections and that it was passed in Ukraine, which helped to overcome
most difficult issues in this sphere, and that the authorities took into
account previous comments of the CoE congress, thanks to which the
quality of voters’ list went up and work of election committees
improved.
According to CoE monitors, such issues as pressuring voters or
intimidating them as well as issues of administration resource abuse did
not occur during these elections, Mosler-Tornstrom said. All these are
compulsory preconditions for free and fair elections under the European
standards, she said.
At the same time, certain issues are not be eliminated by the
Ukrainian authorities, in particular the procedure of counting votes,
Mosler-Tornstrom said.
Ukraine should separate holding local and any other elections,
Mosler-Tornstrom said. It is regrettable that it was decided to hold
local and presidential elections, as a result local elections were in
the shadow of the presidential ones, she said. The CoE recommends
holding future elections separately and that they not coincide with
other elections on the same day, Mosler-Tornstrom said.
