You're reading: Observer from the European Parliament says voting in local elections in Ukraine goes in ordinary normal fashion

Voting in local elections in Ukraine is fairly calm, and goes without major violations, an observer from the European Parliament, the Head of EU-Ukraine Parliamentary Association Committee, Andrej Plenkovic, has said.

“I was in contact with all the three teams (of the EP observers) this morning and they told me that the voting at polling stations takes place in a very calm, very ordinary normal fashion. No signals of any difficulties or problems have been noticed by our teams,” Plenkovic said.

Plenkovic said that the three teams of the EU observers were deployed in cooperation with OSCE/ODIHR in three cities – Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk and Odesa.”We chose these three cities for specific reasons because of the structure of citizens that live in these areas, because of the political vicinity to the frontline and temporarily occupied areas and also because of the IDPs, which are present in some of these cities,” the EU representative said.He added that the EP observers were a part of a wider OSCE/ODIHR mission. ;’We’re coordinating our efforts with them. And we will rely on their information about the votes taking place in temporarily occupied areas,’ he said.

In his words, the European Parliament delegation is comprised of seven members. ‘I was the politically exceptional decision of the European Parliament to send the mission to the local elections. Formerly, we only observed national ones… A year ago this was the presidential election. But since, Ukraine is of our political priority, we very much welcome the invitation by Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Mr. (Volodymyr) Groysman,’ he said.

‘At this moment, according to what I hear and according to what I could have observed, today I went myself to sixty-seven polling stations in the center of Kyiv, and everything seemed to be quiet like in any other European country. Turnout is no so big… Between 10%-15% as of 11 to 12 o’clock,’ he said.

Plenkovic also noted that these elections were taking place for the first time under the new electoral legislation. ‘We asked our precinct electoral commissions if people were aware of the new electoral system. And at least in Kyiv that there are two ballots: one ballot for the election of mayor and one ballot for the election of the Kyiv city council. So people are only going to mark their choice once and it is very simple and nobody has had any difficulties so far in terms of implementation of their right to vote… It is very important that there is no confusion on anything,’ the observer said.