The ENEMO (European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations) General Assembly was held on June 23-24, in Kiev. Yevgen Poberezhny represented Committee of voters of Ukraine. Several changes were operated on this occasion: the ENEMO Secretariat will have five members: CeSID Serbia, APD Romania, Obcianske oko Slovakia, CVU Ukraine and EMC Azerbaijan, with Mr. Costel Popa, Executive Director of APD being nominated as the General Secretary.

Ternopil obast branch of CVU is confident that votes on the problem polling stations should be re-tabulated. Lead-time in this process only destabilize situation in Ternopil and inflame quarells.

The CVU did not notice gross violations affecting the election’s results. Revealed drawbacks had the objective nature; no candidate gained additional benefits.

Khmelnytskiy city mayoral elections began at 7. 00 June 25, 2006. On these elections CVU carries out monitoring of all of the stages of campaign, and also of the process of voting and vote tabulation. All polling stations were opened in good time, all commissions are complete, no cases of quorum absence are recorded.

All-Ukrainian NGO “Committee of Voters of Ukraine” sent a letter to heads and authorized representatives of parliamentary factions on June 19, 2006. They called national deputies to establish permanent communications with voters through regular and comprehensive informing citizens on parliamentary activities.

June 14 Korol’ov regional court cancelled the resolution of city Territorial election commission about cancellation of repeat elections, hence the TEC’s resolution #10 of April 29 “On the declaration of Zhytomyr mayoral elections invalid and appointment of repeat elections (on July 2)” was renewed. The court turned to the public prosecutor by a separate resolution, asking to examine the activity of TEC members, who voted for the cancellation of resolution #10. The courted asked to check, if there was a fact of “disrupting the election process” and exceeding their commission, and to open criminal cases against them.

The resolution of city TEC refers to untenable arguments that “members of polling stations’ commissions are on vacations”, that there are no costs for elections (that is not true), that voter lists are of low-quality. The resolution has no reference on the legal act that authorizes the TEC to make issue resolutions. Without any doubts, there are a lot of problems with repeat elections of Cherkassy mayor, and our organization informed the public regularly about them. However, it was the job of Cherkassy city council, it’s executive bodies and the TEC itself to solve the problems.

According to decisions of courts and corresponding TEC several local elections in Ukraine were declared invalid. In certain cases new elections were appointed. In some cities suits or other processes go on and do not allow to clarify the results of the elections even two months and a half after the voting. The Committee of voters of Ukraine conducts constant monitoring of the situation around the appointing of re-elections, their organization and flow of the campaign. In particular, on 18 of June will be conducted elections of mayors of Cherkassy and Brovary and on 25th of June -elections of mayor of Khmelnytskiy.

Committee of voters of Ukraine and NGO Obcianske oko prepare for print a common publication on problems of legal provision of Ukrainian elections. May 23 the preliminary materials, prepared by Ukrainian and Slovak experts on electoral legislation, were presented at the round table. The attention of experts was focused particularly on the necessity to liberalize electoral legislation, the poor quality of voter lists, problems of legal provisions of media coverage of elections, poor material, technical and financial maintenance of polling station commissions, lack of polling station commissioners’ training, imperfect procedure of commissions’ formation, procedural divergence in conduction of parliament and local elections.

The Project was implemented at public consulting rooms of the CVU, where lawyers and attorneys specialized in the election (constitutional) law rendered qualified assistance to clients. Voter’s Protection Service operated in 20 regions of Ukraine, in particular, in Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Volyn, Vinnytsa, Zhytomyr, Zaporizhzha, Zakarpattya, Luhansk, Odesa, Poltava, Rivne, Ternopil, Kherson, Khmelnytskyi, Sumy, Chernihiv, Chernivtsi, Cherkasy oblasts and the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Sevastopol city. From November 2005 to May 2006, they gave legal advice to more than 5,000 persons.

A round table "Ukrainian electoral legislation: post-electoral evaluation and guidelines", organized by Committee of Voters of Ukraine together with Slovak NGO Obcianske oko (Civic Eye) with the assistance of Slovak Aid, will take place May 23, in Kiev, at Hotel 'Kiev' (Grushevskogo 26/1).

In April 2006, the CVU monitored appeals against results of the parliamentary and local elections, causes and outcomes of such claims. Active members of the CVU monitored the process in all oblasts of Ukraine, the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Kyiv and Sevastopol cities.

During the parliamentary and local elections in 2006, the CVU implemented the number of programs aimed to monitor the campaign, reveal any drawbacks in organization of the election, strengthen openness and fairness of the election process, protect rights of citizens and raise awareness of voters.

Basing on the results of long-term observation Committee of voters of Ukraine concluded that governor of Zapozhzhia oblast Yevgen Chervonenko during election campaign 2006, voting day and during vote tabulation process did not interfere the election process and did not use administrative pressure.

Local elections (especially elections of city mayors) were held with violations or other drawbacks affecting results of voting in many regions (i. e. , withdrawal of candidates from the race immediately before the polling day).