You're reading: Oct. 26 parliamentary election puts Ukraine’s democracy to another test

Ukraine’s democracy is undergoing another stress test.

After successfully holding a presidential election on May 25 even as Russia occupied Crimea and was instigating war in the east, Ukraine will on Oct. 26 hold a snap parliamentary election. The vote will exclude millions of voters in war-torn Donbas and, of course, Crimea.

Mykhailo Okhendovsky, the Central Election Commission head, said on Sept.30 that elections may not be held in 10 out of 21 single-mandate districts in Donetsk Oblast and 7 out of 11 districts in Luhansk Oblast. Donetsk and Luhansk regions, before the war, were home to nearly 15 percent of Ukraine’s population, or more than 6.6 million people.

The off-limits districts are controlled by Kremlin-backed separatists or have become a battlefield between Ukrainian troops and the Russian proxies.

Combined with the 12 single-mandate districts in Crimea now under Russian control, the new parliament may be missing 29 representatives in the 450-seat body, meaning voters in areas with more than 5 million people will be disenfranchised, if the population of Crimea is included.

Half of Ukraine’s parliament is elected from party lists, the other half in single-mandate districts.

The poll, conducted from Sept. 12 to Sept. 21, shows that five political parties have the best chances of winning seats in parliament in the Oct. 26 election. The poll was conducted in 110 population areas in all regions, except for Crimea and Luhansk Oblast. It discounts undecided voters who are unlikely to cast their ballots.

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE/ODIHR) has already deployed 80 long-term observers to all regions of Ukraine, excluding Crimea, and plans to request 600 more to monitor the Election Day voting.

No one, however, has been sent to Donetsk or Luhansk oblasts yet, according to Tana de Zulueta, head of mission to Ukraine.

“It’s an election in which a number of single mandate constituencies are destined to stand empty. That is regrettable from the point of view of the voters and future parliament,” de Zulueta told the Kyiv Post. “We don’t know how much observation we will be able to carry out in (Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts). We are standing ready to do what the security situation permits.”

But security is not the only concern of the mission. The mixed system of proportional and single-mandate constituencies – also in place during the 1998, 2002 and 2012 parliamentary elections – is not entirely in line with OSCE recommendations, de Zulueta said.

The mission’s 2012 report on parliamentary elections noted that through the mixed electoral system a “large number of party-nominated and independent candidates, some of whom were linked to wealthy businesspeople, competed at the district level, while at the national level, some parties represented in parliament did not nominate candidate lists, due to the increased threshold (from 3 to 5 percent).”

Ukraine’s parliament has since failed to vote for changes. Changing the system would be unfavorable for the current government, just as it was for the previous one, Vitaliy Bala, director of Situations Modeling Agency said. Deputies elected in single-mandate constituencies will be used to create the majority in parliament according to Bala.

Using a mixed electoral system where there is no possibility to conduct elections leaves the government open to accusations of holding non-democratic elections, Bala said. “To say that two million people didn’t take part in elections is a substantial argument while, with open party lists, this could be avoided,” Bala said.

The residents of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts theoretically will be able to vote in any other region of Ukraine, but they can’t vote for single-mandate candidates that way.

Andriy Mahera, deputy head of Central Election Commission, expects at least 400 deputies to be elected. “Parliament is legitimate when at least 2/3 of it is elected. In 1994, we had 388 deputies elected, which is even less than expected now,” Mahera said.

Kyiv Post staff writer Anastasia Forina can be reached at [email protected]