That was stated by Tetyana Slipachuk, head of the CEC, at the end of the second session.

By Dmytro Synyak

Yesterday the new membership of the Central Election Commission held their second meeting. The agenda included only six points, four of which concerned rotation in the deputy corps of the Parliament, and two – observers at local elections. There was no word mentioned about the appointment of elections in hromadas, waiting for amalgamation. Consequently, there were fears of delaying the appointment of these elections by already new CEC members.

However, closing the meeting, Tetyana Slipachuk, new head of the Central Election Commission, said: “I want to inform the media about the issue of appointment of the first and additional local elections inamalgamated hromadas. It has gained a widespread public resonance after non-appointment of these elections by the previous membership of the Commission... I inform the audience that the Central Election Commission has already started consideration of this issue to make decision on its resolution...”

In other words, the CEC head stated that the Commission began to work on the problem of appointing elections in AHs. It remains unclear how long the CEC experts will consider the documents. And, according to the legislation, elections should be announced 70 days before the day of voting. Therefore, in order for the elections to take place on the penultimate Sunday of the year, on 23 December, they must be announced no later than this Friday – on 12 October.

According to Tetyana Slipachuk, the CEC has already received 132 appeals from oblast state administrations on the appointment of the first elections in AHs in 22 oblasts, except the Zakarpattia and Kharkiv ones, and 46 appeals from the OSAs on the appointment of additional elections in accessed hromadas.

Tetyana Slipachuk did not give a direct answer to the question of the decentralisation.gov.ua concerning this “time problem”.

“Let's hope we’ll manage to make a decision within these four days,” she said. “I understand that we do not have much time for that.”

It should be menioned that according to MinRegion, as of 5 October, 133 amalgamated hromadas are ready for the first elections of local heads and deputies. These AHs include 569 hromadas – village, settlement, city councils. There are also 60 hromadas waiting for the elections to join 41 already established AHs. These hromadas have a total population of 1 million 519 thousand people.

More information on the CEC’s meeting and exact announcements regarding local elections can be found in the further materials on deentralisation.gov.ua.