Ukraine: Cooperation with Slovakia in election monitoring

The Committee of voters of Ukraine (CVU) and the Slovak NGO Obcianske Oko have presented the results of their common work on problems of legal provision of Ukrainian Presidential and Parliament elections in 2004 and 2006. Obcianske Oko is member of the European Network of Election Monitoring Organisations (ENEMO) missions and headed ENEMO missions to Ukraine at the latest elections. Ukrainian and Slovak experts focused mainly on the necessity to liberalise electoral legislation, to improve the quality of voter lists, to regulate the legal provisions of media coverage of elections, to improve the material, technical and financial maintenance of polling station commissions, to contribute to the polling station commissioners? training, and to mainstream procedural divergence in conduction of parliament and local elections. Representatives from CVU and Obcianske Oko stated the necessity to unify the electoral legislation and to create a single election code, to split up in time parliament and local elections, and to create an updated voter register. In addition to the both NGOs representatives of Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian Parliament), Central election commission, and OCSE mission in Ukraine joined the discussion. A publication with the outcomes of the research is scheduled on summer 2006. The program is implemented with support of Slovak Aid. www.cvu.org.ua www.cvu.org.ua