"The authorities do not seem to be very serious about entering into a dialogue with all political forces on the drafting of a new election code, and instead seem only to be willing to discuss the details of a code they have already drafted in private,"

The draft bill contains all the elements which have already been strongly criticized: the raised electoral threshold to 5%; the mixed system and a ban on blocs taking part in the elections

The European Neighbourhood Policy Country Report 2010 on Ukraine notes that “fundamental freedoms such as the freedom of the media and assembly and democratic standards appear to have deteriorated” and notes that the local elections were widely criticized by most independent experts

The Committee of Voters of Ukraine has issued a statement expressing concern over the reduction in the number of staff in the department keeping the State Register of Voters

In the lead article “Two in One?” for this week’s Dzerkalo Tyzhnya Serhiy Rakhmanin notes that legislation is one of the most effective means of consolidating power with the Law on the Election of National Deputies and the Constitution especially important.

Petro Symonenko, leader of the Communist Party has spoken out against a mixed electoral system and a raising of the voting threshold for getting into parliament from 3% to 5%

The civic organizations who have formed a consortium aimed at reforming electoral legislation have several fundamental reservations regarding certain provisions which cannot promote honest and fair elections

The Head of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine also believes that the prohibition on blocs participating in the parliamentary elections does not meeting the standards required for democratic elections

The Minister of Justice has presented the conceptual tenets of the draft Law on the Election for National Deputies supposedly drawn up by a working group whose international members have abandoned for lack of transparency and pluralism of views

According to the PACE Co-Rapporteur on Ukraine, “The authorities do not seem to be very serious about entering into a dialogue with all political forces on the drafting of a new election code, and instead seem only to be willing to discuss the details of a code they have already drafted in private,”

17 Deputies, without a good reason, missed ALL plenary sessions of parliament during the seventh session from September 2010 to January 2011

In this interview, the Director of the National Democratic Institute explains why western NGOs have suspended their cooperation with the President’s working group on electoral legislation and expresses concern about recent trends and distortion of the facts by the Minister of Justice

OPORA, the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, the Legislative Initiatives Laboratory and Ukrainian Independent Centre of Political Research have announced that they are creating a consortium aimed at ensuring public participation in the drawing up of electoral legislation

Kyiv Post reports that the OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Ukraine has refuted as false and misleading the report by Interfax Ukraine regarding his position on the withdrawal of the National Democratic Institute and International Republican Institute from a working group on the drafting of new Ukrainian election laws.

The National Democratic Institute has decided to suspend its participation in the Working Group on Improving Election Legislation until work on the new law becomes more transparent and takes different views into consideration

Members of the Working Group say they had no impact on the choice of provisions of the conceptual framework, and merely put forward suggestions, some of which were taken into consideration by the Ministry of Justice and President’s Administration

Ukraine’s parliament has rejected a proposal to introduce personal voting by Deputies through the use of a sensor key, with no support from the Party of the Regions, nor the group “Reform for the Future”.

Anatoly Nesteruk, widely expected to win the elections a month later, was arrested on 20 September in a move which large numbers of outraged voters saw as politically motivated. The application for his release came from Deputies of the City Council

If a Cabinet of Ministers bill on local referendums is approved in its current wording, there is a very little chance of local referendums being held at all, a Council of Europe analyst, Gerard Marcou has said.

The Verkhovna Rada on Tuesday made amendments to the Constitution setting the dates of the next presidential and parliamentary elections, thus extending their own term in office