Ukraine
Elections should not be prematurely recognised
Greens/EFA Co-President Rebecca Harms has since last Thursday been in Ukraine as Vice-President of the European Parliament's election observation mission. She warned today against premature recognition of the elections:
"No final assessment of the elections should be made until the ballot count has been finalised. I call on the European Union to carefully and responsibly evaluate the elections, which means dealing correctly with all formal allegations of improper conduct.
The ballot count of the direct mandates takes place under particularly high tension. The composition of the district election committees is skewed in favour of the Party of the Regions and this raises concerns amongst observers that manipulations are possible.
The only thing that can be said for sure today is that there are many positive reports from the election offices, focusing exclusively on the election day itself. Thanks to the commitment of many Ukrainians, the organisational aspects of yesterday's voting seem to have been largely in conformity with the regulations. But at this point in time it isn't possible to judge whether or not results are being changed outside the election offices.
I am very concerned about the many reports of vote-buying and multiple-voting. There are also many reports of opposition candidates being threatened, votes being bought and pressure being brought to bear on public sector employees as well as on employees of major companies.
Special recognition should go to the long-term observers from the OSCE-ODIHR. Their results show that there was no level playing field during the election campaign. There was unequal access to media and the fight for direct mandates involved misuse of institutional power and resources by the governing party's candidates.
The whole election is overshadowed by the ongoing imprisonment of two major opposition politicians, Yulia Tymoshenko and Yuri Lutsenko. Their imprisonment is in clear violation of the OSCE-ODIHR criteria for free and fair elections. In democracies, it is elections and not courts that should judge a government's political work."
