Court strips another MP of his mandate

The High Administrative Court on Thursday ordered the Central Election Commission to cancel MP Ihor Markov’s registration. 

Interfax Ukraine reported that the Court found that it was impossible to establish reliable results for the elections in No. 133 single-mandate electoral district in Odessa where Markov stood for parliament back in October 2012.  The Court also ordered the CEC to take measures to organize and hold a re-run in that constituency.

The suit asking for his removal was lodged by a former (opposition) MP Yury Karmazin.

It was previously reported that the police had confirmed cases of vote-rigging, including pens using with vanishing ink.

Markov himself asserts that the information about an investigation into the falsifications was faked.  On his website he claims that the court refused to question witnesses, including the heads of the precinct electoral commissions where the infringements were found and also refused to include video footage from the polling stations in the case.

He says that the move is because he did not support European integration and did not intend to vote for draft laws needed for the signing of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement.

Last year the CEC found that Markov, the head of the Rodina Party, had won, with 26.6% of the votes. This was almost 6% more than the next candidate, Oleksy Honcharenko, Party of the Regions candidate.

Two other MP were stripped of their mandate in February, with the BBC reporting that both law suits were also lodged by Karmazin.

There was also the highly worrying removal of two other mandates: those of a symbolic, scarcely known Party of the Regions MP and of long-standing MP and Yulia Tymoshenko’s defender Serhiy Vlasenko. (see http://khpg.org/1363292940 and below)

From a report at the BBC Ukrainian Service