Elections in Ukraine don't meet all international standards, says Canada's observers
Canada's election observation mission has said that the parliamentary elections in Ukraine were held not completely in line with international standards.
"We can say that certain deviations in a number of spheres could be seen on the Election Day, which completely undermined a fair voting process," Chair of Canada's Election Observation Mission and Senator of the Canadian parliament Raynell Andreychuk said at a press conference on Monday.
At the same time, she stressed that the violations that were registered "did not have serious impact on the democratic expression of will."
"Taking into account observation results received by us, we can state that the election process on October 28 had certain drawbacks in many regions, which do not allow as to describe the elections as absolutely fair. However, these drawbacks are not a serious obstacle to the free, fair and democratic expression of will by the Ukrainian people," the senator said.
"These elections demonstrated a certain regress in democracy," she said.
Andreychuk also named the following drawbacks and violations, which were registered by the mission during the election campaign – the imprisonment of the leading opposition politicians and potential rivals of the authorities, structural advantages of the ruling party, ineffective consideration of election-related complaints, doubtful procedure of determining election constituencies, use of administrative resources by the ruling party, non-transparent funding of election campaigns, and unfair formation of election commissions.
In addition, the Canadian observers were alarmed by restrictions of freedom of speech in Ukraine and concentration of the media in the ownership of several people, as well as alliances of the media with political parties.
The senator also said that the mission has not finished its work and its observers will keep monitoring work of election commissions. Due to this, the mission's conclusions were preliminary ones.
