Election campaign in the 205 Chernihiv district: 127 candidates, first incidents, threat of administration of administrative resources

On May 30, 2015, the election process of the People’s Deputy of Ukraine was officially launched in the district # 205. The CEC registered a record number of candidates – 127, of which 119 were self -nominated within the deadline. Within the framework of public election monitoring, the Opora Civic Network notes some cases of provocative and force incidents during the electoral process, and also warns about the possible use of administrative resource by individual candidates.

Yevgeny Romanenko, coordinator of the election programs of the OPORA Civic Network in the Chernihiv region, notes that during June 2015 only 5 out of 127 candidates conducted a systemic agitation campaign, namely Gennady Korban (Promotor of the UKROP Party), Serhiy Berezenko) (Self -nominated, member of the UDAR Party), Andriy Mishchenko (Promotor “Svoboda”) and self -nominated Taras Kostanchuk. On the other hand, most candidates remain little known to the constituency voters, which actualizes the threat of voter disorientation during will.

Avoid a concern atmosphere of total distrust between candidates who carry out active agitation work in the district, as well as individual provocative and force incidents. Anonymous notification of the availability of explosive devices in the CEC premises created obstacles to potential candidates on the last day provided for submission of documents for their official registration (June 25). Objective and comprehensive investigation requires the fact of beating by an interior employee who was intoxicated, agitators of the candidate for People’s Deputies of Ukraine Gennady Korban.

It should be noted that direct or indirect abuse of administrative resources threatens the legitimacy of the election process and remains one of the key challenges for election campaigns in Ukraine. In this regard, the support analyst Alexander Klyuzhev noted that it is ambiguous to identify one of the candidates, the nominee of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc “Solidarity” Sergey Berezenko, responsible within the Council of Regional Development under the President of Ukraine for the implementation of development projects in the Chernihiv region.

With the help of monitoring the resolutions of the Central Election Commission, OPORA found that in the current composition of the District Election Commission No. 205 (as of 01.07.2015) 10 of 18 of the 18 members of the DEC have no experience in organizing and holding the EMC elections. In general, since June 3, 2015, the CEC has adopted four resolutions on amendments to this commission, which resulted in 8 out of 18 persons from the “first” DEC composition. The excessively large number of applicants for the deputy’s mandate can adversely affect the formation and activity of precinct election commissions, when active participants in the election campaign will monopolize the impact on these commissions through the quotas of little -known candidates.

The Opora Civic Network calls on law enforcement agencies to respond to the violation of the electoral legislation and notify them effectively during the electoral process in the district No. 205, and the central and local authorities take a politically impartial position on the electoral process and the candidates themselves. The electoral process requires systematic coordination of the election commissions of the district by the CEC. At the same time, candidates should be restrained in the election campaign, since the over -conflict of elections can call into question the public perception of the results of voting.

You can see the first public resistance monitoring report at the link: