Observers approve local elections, criticize parallel poll

Ukraine’s local
elections on Oct. 25 were held orderly, transparently and were well-organized,
according to an assessment published on Oct. 26 by the Office for Democratic
Institutions and Human Rights of the OSCE. At the same time, the president’s
national poll that was conducted in parallel offered an unfair advantage to The
People’s Servant party. “We can state that the poll, which was initiated by
President Zelensky and which was conducted alongside polling stations on
election day – and which was financed by his political party, and which was
also applied to respective initiatives that are being introduced by his office
– created somewhat of an unfair political advantage and also directly blurred
the line between the state and the political party,” the OSCE statement said.

As for the first
official results of the president’s poll, about 83% of those who responded said
they support life imprisonment for those guilty of corruption in large amounts.
About 46.7% of respondents said they support creating a free trade zone in the
Donbas region (compared to 46.5% opposed), about 90% support reducing the
number of MPs to 300 (from 450 currently), about 65% support legalizing
cannabis for medical use and 74% support raising the issue of Ukraine’s
security guarantees in the Budapest Memorandum. The results are based on 74% of
processed questionnaires.

Oleksandr
Korniyenko, the head of the People’s Servant parliamentary faction, said he
will consider moving forward with legislation to reduce the number of MPs in
parliament, based on the overwhelming support for the measure in the poll
results.

Zenon Zawada: Whatever advantage the national
poll was designed to give to People’s Servant candidates, it failed miserably.
The party could not gain the mayorship of a single regional center, according
to an exit poll. It also had lackluster results in council voting, as had been
expected. That makes it all the more unfortunate that the President’s Office
engaged in this cheap and reckless stunt, which included questions that have
the potential to polarize the country further as it remains under Russian
aggression. In particular, voters are evenly split on the issue of offering
economic and trade benefits to the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk still
controlled by Ukraine.

The Central Election Commission has yet to offer any official tally of
the results, which is unfortunate as the only data we have to rely on so far is
a single exit poll. So we have to refrain from any more assessments of the
elections until the official numbers are published, which could extend beyond
this week.