Parliament on Nov. 10 decided that local elections in Mariupol and Krasnoarmeysk would take place Nov. 29. Elections in the two Donetsk Oblast cities near the war front didn’t take place on Oct. 25 because of alleged violations.
By announcing elections
for Nov. 29, parliament avoided a more complex procedure of starting the election
process from scratch, including the establishment of new local elections
commissions and allowing for the normal 60 days of political campaigning.
Instead the elections would be considered “unfinished” and the same local
election commission that had compromised themselves by the failure to the
organize elections in the first place would be responsible for the Nov. 29
elections.
Arguing in parliament
for the proposal to conduct swift elections, Sergey Taruta, a lawmaker elected
in a single-mandate constituency in Mariupol, said that the German outlet Der
Spiegel had called the Azov Sea port city of 500,000 people a a symbol for the nation’s choice for the West by fighting off Russia’s advances.
Other lawmakers like
Olena Sotnyk from the Samopomich Party criticized the idea of conducting local elections without solving the problems
that had led to the failure. She was backed by the other junior government
coalition party Batkivshchyna and the Donetsk native Petro Poroshenko Bloc
lawmaker Yehor Firsov.
Samopomich voted against
having the elections on Nov. 29, while most of the two leading coalitions members, President Petro Poroshenko’s Bloc and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’ People’s Front voted for the Nov. 29 date, joining with the former Party of Regions factions, including the Opposition Bloc and
Vidrodzhenia.
Citing with Taruta, the
chairman of the parliament asked the
MP’s to support the conduct of swift elections in the two cites. “Ukraine is a
part of Europe and Mariupol and Krasnoarmeysk are Ukrainian cities. How can we
deprive them of one of the greatest European rights – the right to vote and be
elected?” he urged the lawmakers as he repeatedly put the bill up for vote.
In Mariupol, a major
industrial city that produces 10 percent of the nation’s steel, so
called pro-EuroMaidan political forces had blocked the elections because they
mistrusted the ballot papers. Produced in a print house connected to the owner
of the steel plants, the former Party of Regions backer and tycoon Rinat
Ahmetov the fear was that the old elite would attempt election fraud by
printing extra ballots and add them to the count in favor of their candidates.
Parliament was assured that this time around the ballots would be printed at non-party enterprise.
The parliament didn’t
consider Sotnyk’s idea of starting the election process all over in the
two cities. That would have resulted in an election date in early 2016.
Sergey Tkachenko, a
Donbas-based Opora election watchdog expert, had earlier told the Kyiv Post that
a total reboot of the elections in the two cites was the ideal solution.
Asked
to comment the parliament’s Nov. 10 decision he said that it was a good
compromise brewed by Taruta insofar that the voters’ rights were important. “It
is unlikely that the election officials will let the second attempt end in
failure,” he said, explaining that democracy was a learning curve in eastern
Ukraine for the local elites.
“The former Party of
Regions is still firmly in charge of financial power in the region…the democratic
opposition has a good chance going forward. But it can’t be imported from Kyiv,
it’s gotta be homegrown to be trusted,” Tkachenko said.
The next local elections
in the country might only be two years away, pending constitutional changes.
Staff writer Johannes Wamberg Andersen can be reached
at [email protected]
