Rada amends local elections rules after setting vote for Oct. 25

Ukraine’s parliament approved on July 16 amendments to
the elections code ahead of the local elections, which it voted the prior day
to set for Oct. 25. The biggest change involved extending the proportional
system of voting (awarding council seats based on party results) to territories
of 10,000 residents, from 90,000 before. This provision was criticized by the
Opora election monitoring organization as violating international standards
(being changed too close to the elections) and restricts the ability of
candidates to compete independently. The changes also unified the elections
code’s norms, simplified election procedures, correlated various deadlines and
resolved gaps and inconsistencies, according to the bill’s summary. More than
200 out of 289 statutes to the code were amended, it said.

Parliament voted on July 15 to withdraw from the
agenda legislation to reduce and consolidate the number of administrative
districts in Ukraine to 129 from 490. The bill was submitted by PM Denys
Shmyhal, who pointed out that certain districts have 5,000 residents, while
others have 180,000. “This creates large skews in subsidies and grants. The
responsibilities in such districts are equal, but the workloads are different,”
he told a June cabinet meeting.

On July 16, the respective parliamentary committee
proposed creating 136 districts instead of 490, with committee head Andriy
Klochko calling for the Oct. 25 elections to be held based on the new
districts. “The process of setting the latest local elections without finally
resolving the issue of creating new districts doesn’t promote the stability of
the process of preparing for local campaigning and was accompanied by
significant social-political tensions,” Opora said in a July 15 statement.
Opora called upon parliament “to immediately decide on the liquidation and creation
of districts to ensure the stability and predictability of the preparation” for
the election campaign.

Zenon Zawada: The
pro-Zelensky People’s Servant faction has been conducted various experiments in
recent sessions (outlined above) to create some advantages in the local
elections. For example, creating obstacles for independent candidates will
prompt many of them to opt to compete with The People’s Servant, which has a
populist platform based on a few basic positions that most Ukrainians agree upon
(ending the war under adequate conditions, E.U. integration, the urgency of
road repair).

Another change involved reformatting the election
ballot to have the names of candidates printed alongside the party they
represent, instead of further below. This will also help candidates from The
People’s Servant, which is still Ukraine’s most popular political party.

Meanwhile, we expect parliament will approve the
measure to severely reduce number of Ukraine’s administrative districts, which
will help to improve the central government’s ability to administer the
nation’s regions. Any confusion introduced in the elections process, as warned
by Opora, should be offset by a simpler means of arranging the elections and
establishing results. We don’t see any particular benefit for The People’s
Servant party with this reform.