Election observation mission – 25 October 2015 local elections – Ukraine

Presentation by Gudrun Mosler-Törnström (Austria, SOC), Vice-President of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe

Welcome briefing for the members of the delegation

Kiev, 23 October 2015

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Good morning, dear ladies and gentlemen,

It is my great pleasure to open this joint briefing session in order to prepare the observation of local elections to be held this Sunday in Ukraine. You may know, for some of us this is already the second day of briefings - I turn here to my colleagues from the Congress and to the members of the EU Committee of the Regions with whom the Congress has a long-standing partnership in observing local and regional elections.

For those of you who arrived yesterday - dear colleagues from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, dear experts - a very warm welcome to all of you in Kyiv!

You are aware, this is first time that a delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly associates itself to a Congress’ election observation mission which underlines, not least, the great attention paid by the international community to these elections. Personally, I am delighted and honored to be the Head of this enlarged delegation – including, all in all, 57 observers from 25 countries - and I look forward to cooperating with the Parliamentary Assembly, notably with you, dear Mr ZINGERIS, in your capacity as leader and Spokesperson of the PACE team. Our friend and Spokesperson of the Committee of the Regions, Arnoldas ABRAMAVIČIUS, will join us in a couple of hours.

Jos WIENEN, the Congress’ Thematic Spokesperson on election observation and current Chair of the Council for Democratic Elections, has agreed to be Rapporteur of this election observation mission and he will be supported by Dr. Reto STEINER, member of the Congress’ Group of Independent Experts.

You may know that a short pre-electoral visit was carried out by the Congress from 30 September to 2 October. Before I talk about this visit, let me welcome also Alain DELCAMP, Congress’ Advisor on Constitutional Matters, who will introduce the part on constitutional amendments and decentralisation. This will be followed by an analysis on the particularities of the legal framework of these elections by Ms Amaya UBEDA from the Venice Commission.

But first, allow me some general remarks about the local elections and major findings of the pre-electoral visit: 

• The local elections we are going to observe on Sunday are the first to be held after the new Law on Local Elections, adopted on 14 July 2015. There are some 30 million of voters contained in the State Voter Register. There will be no local elections in 123 localities in the so-called “contact zone” under the central Government’s control. Mariupol is the exception.

• No specific legislation has been adopted to ensure IDPs to vote in these local elections.

• The electoral campaign – which seems to be calm, so far - has started on 5 September and ends by today. Law provides a 24 hours silent period tomorrow.

• 50 parties are actively campaigning, among them 11 have nation-wide relevance.

• The new legislation introduces a combination of three electoral systems including a proportional system in multi-member constituencies which has been commented in a rather controversial manner.

•  There are two conditions for a candidate to win under this system:

• This means a candidate who got the biggest amount of votes in his/her consistency, but whose party did not receive at least 5% of the votes in the whole territorial unit, is not elected. This may lead to results which have only a weak correlation with the voters’ will.

• Furthermore, the setup of constituencies has been identified as unbalanced regarding the number of voters included. This unequal size of constituencies can result in a disputable allocation of seats and malapportionment of mandates.

• The participation of independent candidates is not ensured for all the elections, which is a particular concern regarding local elections.

• The sub-division of territorial units into small consistencies creates also the risk of misuse of administrative resources, vote-buying and other kinds of electoral fraud.

• Vote-buying is a major concern because Ukraine is currently undergoing a serious economic crisis. Vote-buying notably includes the provision of food packages to voters.

• The complexity of the new electoral system and the great number of elections at different levels of local/regional government is a challenge.

• The tabulation process might be very long and results might be challenged.

• Inconsistent decisions regarding candidates’ registration have been taken by various electoral commissions. However, after complains were filed to the CEC of Courts, most candidates have been finally registered.

• The Law on Local Elections provides for a 30% gender quota but due to inconsistent Courts decisions, the quota has not been respected by many of the candidates’ lists.
• Regarding the media, the overwhelming presence of prefabricated media content is a big concern because journalists accept content provided by political parties and other stakeholders without labelling.

• There are also some 550 newspapers under the control of local authorities and funded by them. Those are not independent media and used as political propaganda.

• Last not least, the decentralisation legislative package is currently under discussion, and I invite now Alain DELCAMP to give us an up-date on this situation.

Dear Alain, the floor is now yours.