The fact that the election law was passed well before the elections did not save it from changes. Although the MPs were saying that this happened “for the first time,” “practically a year before the elections,” it was clear to everybody that changes were bound to occur. It is the Constitutional Court that began introducing them. First it axed three single-winner constituencies in Kyiv at the expense of foreign districts and then banned simultaneous nomination by party lists and in the first-past-the-post constituencies. The MPs have picked up the baton now. The parliament’s website informs that the bill on amendments to the election law has already been registered. The Legal Policies Committee has given the go-ahead, and the bill is awaiting the first reading.
“The existing election law really has some legislative blunders which will make it impossible, on the technical level, to normally conduct the election campaign, so the Central Election Commission has proposed some changes,” opposition MP Mykola Katerynchuk says. “For example, the ballot indicates the candidate’s first name and patronymic, but not his last name. Can you possibly imagine a ballot paper without the last name? And there are a lot of ‘trifles’ like this. There are so far no dangers in the draft law, but they may come up later. As is known, MPs are authorized to introduce changes in the second reading. So the Party of Regions, which wields a majority, can introduce anything it wants to. Practice only confirms this. But we emphasize: crucial points, such as a ban on expelling a candidate from the elections, must be left intact. The point is the government does have this kind of temptation, not to mention the fact that the resolution on foreign constituencies was absolutely illegitimate. There must be foreign constituencies because half a million people also have the right to vote.”
“I do not think that any new essential changes will be introduced,” says Valerii Bondyk, a Party of Regions MP. “What we need is technical changes. The Central Election Commission showed a non-political approach in this case. It unanimously voted for making the amendment. It is a compromissary law. We voted automatically, together with the opposition. This is why some mistakes crept into the law. The Central Commission has corrected us.”
In reality, everything will depend on the political moment. So far, the MPs seem to be really willing to correct themselves in technical terms during the first reading of the bill. But the process may become difficult in the second reading. And no one knows what the government will prefer later, in comparison to what it is saying now. And the opposition? The opposition voted for this law. What did they hope for? That the Party of Regions, which has a majority, will fail to correct the situation?
