OPORA: Dubious winner in contentious Kyiv constituency

The election watchdog OPORA reports that the Central Election Commission has taken the protocols for single-mandate electoral district commission No. 223 for examination. This was one of the most fiercely contended electoral districts with the fight essentially between Viktor Pylypyshyn and VO Svoboda candidate Yury Levchenko.

According to the results announced by the head of the district election commission [DEC] Olha Gagarina, Pylypyshyn won with a lead of 422 votes. However the Deputy Head of the CEC Andriy Mahera has said that he would not be prepared to sign the protocols and that the CEC will be taking them for examination. He also stressed that the results posted on the CEC site are not the final vote count for that district., and that this will be established in accordance with the law.

Candidate Yury Levchenko who was present at the session asserted that the recount for No. 223 had been carried out on far-fetched grounds. He said that the DEC did not have the right to enforce the court ruling due to two paragraphs of Article 94 of the Law on the Parliamentary Elections. 94.11 states that all election document which is sent for a recount must be kept in the premises where the DEC met, yet it was not there. 94.12 gives the prerequisites for a recount to take place. There need to be 4 members of the commission which submitted the documents, and this, he said, had not been the case. Levchenko said that the entire world had been following the work of DEC No. 223 and had seen their falsification.

OPORA notes that the recount was only carried out at some polling stations, and when Pylypyshyn received the needed result, the commission didn’t count any further.

DEC No. 223 was the last commission to submit protocols. According to the CEC resolution from 5 November the outcome from the single-mandate electoral district race cannot be established, and it is one of those the CEC said needed re-elections.