Veronika Melkozerova
The International Foundation for Electoral Systems, a
global election watchdog, has slammed changes parliament has made to Ukraine's #election_legislation, saying the amendments were "inconsistent with
international standards."
According to the amendments to the law, which was
signed by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Feb. 25, political parties
will be allowed to exclude lawmaker candidates from their party lists
immediately after elections.
“According to the law, from now on it is the parties,
not the voters, who will decide who is elected under the party lists.
Candidates can be crossed out from a list at any time once the election results
are officially published by the Central Election Commission,” reads an official
statement posted on the IFES’s Facebook page.
The International Foundation for Electoral Systems
(IFES) is a global organization that supports the right to free and fair
elections in more than 140 countries around the world.
The IFES said the adopted law violates the principle
of legal certainty, “can open the door to political corruption, and would have
a negative impact on internal party democracy, because candidates who do not
share the views of the party leadership can be excluded from the party lists after
the elections.”
The law, No. 3700 “On changes to the law on the deputy
election process that will allow the expelling of deputy candidates from party
lists in multi-mandate constituencies” was finally approved by the parliament
on Feb. 16 after hours of procedural tussles.
Lawmakers supporting the bill made 18 attempts on Feb.
16 to have the law included on the agenda of the parliament session before it
was finally voted on.
Serhiy Leschenko, a reformist lawmaker from the
pro-presidential Bloc of Poroshenko Bloc, called the law “a bill for the
dictatorship of party chiefs,” saying it would allow party bosses “to cleanse
their party lists of unfavorable lawmaker candidates who are in line to enter
parliament.”
But Volodymyr Fesenko, the head of the PENTA center of
political research, told the Kyiv Post that this “not so democratic law” would
be in force only for the current parliament.
“This parliament has approved this law because of the
increasing internal conflicts in all the ruling parties. The old political
alliances are in ruins. Who wants to see his or her sponsor in the past, who is
now an enemy, sitting next to him (in parliament)?” Fesenko said.
According to Fesenko current lawmakers won’t be
affected by the changes to the law - it only concerns new candidates.
“When lawmakers like (Mykola) Tomenko or Yegor Firsov
and others decided to leave their faction (the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko), they
cleared places for the next candidates (on the party lists). But some of these
(candidates) have become extremely unfavorable to the president’s party and the
other forces that rule in parliament,” said Fesenko.
Thirteen lawmakers have already left the Bloc of Petro
Poroshenko.
On Feb. 2 Leschenko wrote on his Facebook page that
the aim of the law was to get rid of Andriy Bohdan, № 74 on Poroshenko's party
list and the next candidate in line to enter parliament.
According to Leschenko, Bohdan, who is now the defense
lawyer for Hennady Korban, is a close ally of Dnipropetrovsk oligarch Ihor
Kolomoysky. Korban is currently facing charges of kidnapping and money
laundering.
“Bohdan, Kolomoysky’s man, was included in
Poroshenko’s Party list more than a year ago, when an alliance with the
Dnipropetrovsk oligarch was profitable for the president. Now there is war
between them. So they will do anything to expel Bohdan,” wrote Leschenko.
Fesenko partly confirmed Leschenko’s claim.
“This law benefits at least three political forces.
(Oleh) Lyashko’s Radical Party and (Yulia) Tymoshenko’s Batkivschyna Party also
has some candidates who have no credibility. The leaders want to have more
control over the party lists,” said Fesenko.
According to the Rada website, law No. 3700 was
co-sponsored by Yury Lutsenko, the head of the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko
fraction, Yulia Tymoshenko, the leader of the Batkivschyna Party, Oleh Lyashko,
the head of the Radical Party, Samopomich Party faction head Oleh Berezyuk,
People’s Front faction head Maxym Burbak, and Radical Party lawmaker Oleh
Kuprienko.
Poroshenko signed the law nine days after it was
approved by the Rada and just a day it was sent to him for signature. The swift
approval of the law contrasts with other key legislation, such as the law on
the National Police of Ukraine, which the Rada approved on July 2, 2015 but
Poroshenko only signed in August, a month later.
According to the IFES, the only other country in
Europe that has introduced a “party-administered mandate” is Serbia. The
respective provision in the Serbian Parliamentary Election Law was strongly
criticized by the Venice Commission and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Office for Democratic
Institutions and Human Rights. In particular, the Venice
Commission noted that “under proportional representation systems, the order of
the list usually determines the allocation of mandates; otherwise mandates are
allocated on the basis of preferential votes for candidates.”
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