The parliamentary elections in Ukraine did not meet basic democratic standards, and voting irregularities were systematic, the Opora Civil Network has reported.
The coordinator of the electoral programs of the Opora Civil Network,
Olha Aivazovska, presented the preliminary findings on the election
monitoring by Opora observers at a press conference in Kyiv on Tuesday.
“Opora notes Ukraine’s regression in holding democratic elections…
Under the conditions of a mixed electoral system, the illegal use of
administrative resources and the bribery of voters had a significant
impact on the course of the campaign, which generally did not promote
the fairness of its results. These violations were systematic in
nature,” she said.
Aivazovska said that the election could be described as one “that did
not meet basic democratic standards because of the lack of equal
conditions for campaigning by candidates and parties, an unprecedentedly
large number of technical subjects in the electoral process, imbalance
in the composition of election commissions and imbalance in media
reports on parties and candidates.”
Speaking about trends that were seen in the parliamentary elections,
Aivazovska noted that the return to the mixed system had triggered the
massive use of unfair methods of election campaigning in single-seat
constituencies, while government agencies had not provided equal
treatment to all subjects of the election process.
