On the CEC’s sidelines, the newly elected members of the Commission assured that they will unblock elections in AHs. However, the official answer regarding the fate of the elections was uncertain.

By Dmytro Synyak

On 20 September, the Verkhovna Rada renewed the composition of the Central Election Commission, yet even after that there was no certainty that the elections would be immediately unblocked. Therefore, everyone was eagerly awaiting the first meeting of the renewed CEC, where this issue had to be considered. But the members of the Commission did not plan to discuss elections in amalgamated hromadas at their first two meetings. However, immediately after the second meeting was closed, Tetyana Slipachuk, new head of the Central Election Commission, made a statement.

She noted that the issue of local elections “was raised not only by the public, but also by the leadership of the state and foreign partners.”

According to the law, elections must 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 not later than this Friday – on 12 October. Does the CEC have time to consider 178 packages of documents during almost 4 days? Tetyana Slipachuk did not give a direct answer to this question.

“We understand the terms, and it is precisely because this issue is of concern to everyone that I made this brief statement,” she said. “I wanted to show that we are already working on this issue. I hope we’ll manage to make a decision within these four days. I understand that we do not have much time for that.”

On the sidelines several CEC members noted that elections can take place not only on 23 December, but also on December 30^th. The law allows this. They also noted that the work on checking all the documents will not take too much time, since all of them have already been checked at their receipt by the CEC, as well as in the oblast administrations.

More information on the elections in AHs is available HERE.

The full version is available in Ukrainian – please click HERE