Prime Minister Azarov: Rada election will be transparent

Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said Friday that the government will ensure “complete transparency” of the October 28 parliamentary election. Azarov said the government plans to install web cameras at each polling station and to invite international observers to monitor the process. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe plans to send 800 observers to Ukraine to monitor October’s parliamentary election, Interfax reported last week, citing a Party of Regions MP.

Brad Wells: The government’s attempts to run a free and fair election if the fall are admirable and we are optimistic that they can be successful. Ukraine has had a long string now of national elections for parliament and president that have broadly adhered to international democratic standards and gotten the blessing from international observer groups. According to our projections, the Party of Regions is likely to maintain a majority in parliament after the election on the strength of its power base in Ukraine’s most populated regions (50% of seats will be assigned by voting in demographically determined constituencies) without having to resort to vote tampering. We do note though that there is significant concern that given recent democratic backsliding in other areas of governance and imperfect local elections in 2010 that the temptation to pad the results come October will be too great.