OSCE to send 800 observers to Ukraine parliamentary poll

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe plans to send 800 observers to Ukraine to monitor October’s parliamentary election, Interfax reported yesterday, citing a Party of Regions MP. The MP said that the non-participation in the election of jailed former government officials was not a reason to initially consider the elections unfair. The number of observers compares to 600 observers OSCE sent for Ukraine’s 2010 parliamentary election.

Brad Wells: A strong OSCE observer mission sends a couple of positive messages to Ukraine – that Europe is paying close attention to Ukrainian politics and that Europe cares about an open and fair election. We continue to believe that jailed former government officials and key opposition leaders Yulia Tymoshenko and Yuriy Lutsenko will not be allowed to participate in the elections, in accordance with their judicial convictions. This presents an interesting scenario where, in the best case, the election itself goes off without many hitches and gets an OSCE blessing, but wherein many foreign governments just the same raise eyebrows at the final results since opposition leaders were excluded from running and campaigning.