Constitutional Court affirms parliamentary election rules

Ukraine’s Constitutional Court ruled on April 10 to ban candidates from running for parliament in the upcoming October election simultaneously on a party list and in a majority constituency. In doing so, the court affirmed a previous ruling it made on the issue in 1998. The October election will be the first since a new election law was signed into effect in December 2011 that restored a dual-mandate system: 225 of the 450 parliament seats will be elected by party lists, with other half elected by simple-majority constituencies. The ruling was quickly lambasted by the leaders of smaller opposition parties, who claimed it would make it more difficult for their parties to overcome the 5% threshold required to get into parliament.

Brad Wells: While this ruling is not particularly surprising or controversial, we are starting to see a trend of election rulings and decisions tending to favor the ruling Party of Regions. Another prominent example was last week’s Constitutional Court decision to deny traditionally opposition-leaning citizens living abroad from voting in the constituency portion of the ballot (see our news from April 6). At the same time, this year the far more important issue will be the level of opposition participation in the upcoming election the government allows and if it will permit jailed leaders, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko, to run.