In this presidential election, OPORA will cover 225 constituencies across Ukraine with their 74 long-term observers and will recruit over 1,000 observers to monitor the Election Day. This report is the third and final report on the pre-election period. OPORA is conducting a statistical quick count in both rounds of elections and will announce its results on election night.

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THE ELECTORAL FRAMEWORK AND ITS IMPACT

The Ukrainian Parliament and the Central Election Commission have failed to provide direction and clarify questions raised regarding:

  • No clear grounds for voting at polling stations abroad;
  • No clear list of documents to be submitted by the voters, who are not registered at the consular offices, but want to cast a ballot;
  • The procedure of adding voters to the voter lists on the Election Day by PECs contradicts a row of articles of the Law of Ukraine "On the Election of the President of Ukraine".

Parliamentarians were not enthusiastic about amending the legislation. A new Law of Ukraine "On the Election of the President of Ukraine" should have been amended, but the attempt to complete the process of elaboration by adding missing norms was unsuccessful. This adds to the public perception that the process is unfair and challenges the credibility and legitimacy of the election results and might furthermore undermine the public trust in the voting, tabulation and the appeals process.

Recommendations:

  • OPORA calls on the CEC to provide a final directive on outstanding questions related to mobile voting, consulate voting and addition to voters lists, and to publicize this in all newspapers and through electronic means to the PEC leadership.
  • OPORA encourages all monitors and journalists to act responsibly and follow the evidence and fact-based documentation on Election Day in order to display a real voting process and give unbiased assessments.
  • OPORA encourages all electoral participants to respect the rights of voters and to act in a responsible manner.

 

PERFORMANCE OF ELECTION COMMISSIONS

Overall the Election Commission performed it tasks within the legal framework and with decisions available to the public.  There were special challenges that made the formation of DECs and PECs a challenge including:  the lack of experience and training of election commission members, delays with funding of the election process, poor legislation and administrative support to the lower level commissions. The law allowed candidates to have two appointees on each commission, but in practice the oversized commissions (up to 36 members) had problems in forming quorums and with troubled decision making process. Because of the lack of experience (70% of members work in commissions for the first time) and non-realizing the responsibility, commissions` leadership rotated during December- January. Citizens refused to take up their positions.

Recommendations of the Civil Network OPORA:

  • DECs and PECs - to be responsible as they perform their duties, do not politize commission work and follow the Law;
  • CEC, bodies of local self-government and Ministry of Finance - to provide appropriate material and technical supply;
  • Candidates - to thoroughly chose appointees to election commissions for the second round of voting, organize extra study for them regarding amendments introduced to the legislation.

 

FREEDOM TO CAMPAIGN

Overall, the candidates and campaigns had the ability to reach voters without interference and there were limited obstructions, violations or censorship. Candidates went on the air, placed materials in newspapers, web-sites, spoke on radio. However, the freedom of speech in 90 pre-election days turned into business as the mass media at the national and regional levels were driven by candidate`s purchase of advertising time. OPORA remains concerned about the practice of paying reporters for favorable coverage. Without notification, the public these articles or stories are ‘advertising` as the law stipulates. This causes voter confusion and distortion about what is news and advertising.

Recommendation: OPORA strongly recommends to all media outlets to respect provisions of the law and clearly note paid favorable coverage as a "political advertisement".

 

VOTERS` RIGHTS

For the first time, the centralized Voters Register is fully implemented in Ukraine. This represents big step forward in securing voters` rights and important safeguard of manipulation with Voters lists. However, the work on verifying voter lists should be prolonged, as their quality is poor. Based on its observation OPORA considers that operation of Voter registry departments, verification and revision of voters` data, good promotion campaign did not get expected results during the period of the lists compiling. A lot of voters are not included into the lists, there are mistakes in names, persons who died and those people who are included into the list for two times. As DECs have no power to verify the lists, mistakes still remain in the current lists.

Gaps and confusions in legislation, followed by the absence of clear CEC directions, can cause the situation, when election commissions, freely interpreting the norms of Law, will interpret voter eligibility differently, causing uneven standards and rules. Adding voters to the lists can not be done without commissions` decisions, which will organize uninterrupted process of voting at the polling stations. So, citizens have to address the courts directly if they want to realize their right to vote.

Recommendations of the Civil Network OPORA:

  • DECs - to follow the norms of the current Law and CEC decrees, adopted within its powers;
  • PECs - to keep to the norms of legislation, which says that PECs will not be entitled to make decisions on correcting the lists and to interrupt the process of voting;
  • Courts - to organize their work in such a way that voters will be able to address the courts on the Election Day (from 8 am to 8 pm) with an statement of claim regarding mistakes in voter lists and immediately receive court`s decision on being included into the lists and having the right to vote;
  • Voter registry departments - to inform DECs immediately about the case when one voter was included into the list for two times.

 

ADMINISTRATIVE RESOURCES

The use of administrative resource across entire Ukraine has been witnessed by OPORA observers from the beginning of the election campaign until the voting day. The scale of using government resource, both locally and nationally, to provide support (organizational, informational and campaigning) to specific candidates is less than in 2004.  

OPORA notes that political diversification, namely affiliation of power officials with different political forces across Ukraine, aligns the impact of officials over the electoral process in general. Whilst the Party of Regions prevails in local authorities in the East and South of Ukraine, local councils in the West, North and Center are mainly presented by BYT, at times by OU-PSD (Our Ukraine - People`s Self-Defense). However, this picture cannot justify even the slightest occasion involving infringement of equal opportunities for candidates to run election campaigns, so that citizens could make informed choices.  

In fact, voters themselves, as taxpayers, sponsored the part of the campaign of the incumbent President and Prime-Minister. Public funds were spent on building roads, opening education and healthcare institutions, providing transport vehicles to institutions, supplying hospitals with long-awaited medical facilities, giving apartment ownership certificates, enforcing land property rights of citizens.

Recommendations: During official visits candidates and their representatives should not deliver their election programs and should not encourage citizens to cast a vote in their favour or against other subjects of election process.

 

VOTE BUYING

Practices of non-money vote buying have been widely applied by headquarters of the two leading campaign leaders, involving MPs, local councillors, public officials or candidates themselves. Civil Network OPORA estimates this illegal influence on the free expression of will as one of the most dangerous to public faith in the election process and results as it undermine the public trust in the voting. Over the period before the Election Day observers witnessed cases of supplying free medical goods and services, legal support of documents to receive land ownership certificates, clothes and food, which involved campaigning for a certain candidate.

Recommendation: OPORA is concerned about continuing vote buying on and around Election Day and encourages citizens to come forward and report these violations to make prosecutions possible.  

 

PUBLIC OVERSIGHT

The current election law discriminates against citizen organizations, unbiased in their estimations of the election process to register as election observers. In practice this means that a foreigner has more rights in this election than a citizen of Ukraine since they can register as election observers. In this part the Law conflicts with the Document of the Copenhagen meeting of the Conference on the human dimension of the CSCE. The Document is applied in Ukraine.

Recommendations:

  • Verkhovna rada of Ukraine - to adopt amendments to the Law of Ukraine "On the Election of President of Ukraine" according to international agreements. 
  • The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to support fair and transparent conduct of Presidential elections in Ukraine and to insist on making amendments to the election legislation according to the international agreement with Ukraine.