Parliamentary election in Ukraine 2012
The 2012 elections to the Ukrainian Parliament took place on October 28, 2012. An early election to the Verkhovna Rada was planned for December 2008, but was postponed to 2009. In view of the international financial crisis , which hit Ukraine hard and required a decisive government, as well as the fluctuating polls for the parties represented in parliament, the early elections ultimately did not take place on this date either. It finally took place at the end of the regular four-year legislative period.
Starting position
The early elections initially planned were the result of the dissolution of parliament by President Viktor Yushchenko , which he announced in a televised address on the evening of October 8, 2008. The reason for this was the breakup of the government coalition under Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and the inability of the parliamentary groups to form a new government majority within the constitutional deadline. Initially, December 7, 2008 was the date for the election.
The resolution of the Ukrainian parliament planned by the president just over a year after the last election in 2007 was a new high point in the ongoing state crisis in Ukraine that has existed since the 2004 presidential election . Its cause lies in the ongoing power struggle between parliament and president, which paralyzes the country's political activity and is favored by the constitutional division of power between the government and the head of state.
MEPs of the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc announced that they would legally challenge the presidential decree, since the Ukrainian constitution states that the parliament cannot be dissolved until one year after its meeting (November 23, 2007) at the earliest. However, President Yushchenko and others saw September 30, 2007, as the starting point for the deadline. At the instigation of the BJuT, a Kiev district court suspended the presidential decree to dissolve parliament on October 11 and banned the Ukraine Central Electoral Commission from taking any steps to prepare for the elections until further notice. President Yushchenko then had the court dissolved by decree, which in turn prohibited a higher court.
At the beginning of 2008, the polls clearly saw Yulia Tymoshenko's electoral bloc in the lead, albeit far from an absolute majority of the votes. In autumn of that year, however, the political climate had shifted in favor of the Party of Regions . The collapse of the parties that supported the then President Yushchenko and the high number of those who stated that they did not want to vote or wanted to vote against everyone was also striking.
International election observers
According to reports from the Ukrainian media, around 10,000 election observers are said to have checked the course of the elections. According to the OSCE, 3,797 international election observers were registered with the Central Election Commission of Ukraine. Several hundred long-term election observers from OSCE member states arrived in mid-September 2012, followed by 600 short-term election observers who were supposed to arrive a week before the elections to monitor compliance with electoral standards at the polling stations.
According to the German Ambassador to Ukraine Hans-Jürgen Heimsoeth, Germany also sent a large number of election observers to Ukraine.
On October 25, 2012, a delegation of 15 members of the European Parliament together with more than 700 election observers from various international institutions and organizations arrived in Ukraine.
New voting system
Distribution of votes
At the end of 2011, the distribution of votes in Ukraine was changed from a purely proportional system to a mixed proportional- majority system. Half of the 450 seats in parliament are occupied by candidates directly elected in the individual constituencies.
Direct mandates
Compared to the last parliamentary election, the distribution of direct mandates in the constituencies has changed. The Donetsk Oblast has lost 2 mandates, the Luhansk Oblast has lost a mandate Oblasts Ivano-Frankivsk and Kiev and the city of Kiev , which is a "city with special status" (see: Administrative divisions of Ukraine ) each how to achieve a direct mandate.
Result
| Political party | be right | proportion of | Relationship- | Constituency | Total seats |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party of Regions | 6,116,815 | 30.00% | 73 | 114 | 187 |
| Fatherland (including the United Opposition) | 5,208,402 | 25.55% | 61 | 42 | 103 |
| UDAR | 2,847,939 | 13.97% | 34 | 6th | 40 |
| Communist Party of Ukraine | 2,687,246 | 13.18% | 32 | - | 32 |
| Swoboda | 2,129,906 | 10.45% | 25th | 12 | 37 |
| Ukraine - Forward! | 322.207 | 1.58% | - | - | |
| Our Ukraine | 226,485 | 1.11% | - | - | - |
| Radical Party | 221.136 | 1.08% | - | 1 | 1 |
| Party of Pensioners of Ukraine | 114.198 | 0.56% | - | - | - |
| Socialist Party of Ukraine | 93,081 | 0.45% | - | - | - |
| Green Party of Ukraine | 70.257 | 0.34% | - | - | - |
| Ukrainian party "Green Planet" | 70.117 | 0.34% | - | - | - |
| Russian block | 63,534 | 0.31% | - | - | - |
| Green | 51,381 | 0.25% | - | - | - |
| Ukraine of the future | 38,532 | 0.19% | - | - | - |
| Political Union "Homeland Fatherland" | 32,724 | 0.16% | - | - | - |
| People's Labor Union | 22,854 | 0.11% | - | - | - |
| New policy | 21,033 | 0.10% | - | - | - |
| Hromada | 17,699 | 0.08% | - | - | - |
| National Assembly / Self-Defense | 16,938 | 0.08% | - | - | - |
| Liberal Party of Ukraine | 15,565 | 0.07% | - | - | - |
| United center | - | - | - | 3 | 3 |
| People's Party | - | - | - | 2 | 2 |
| union | - | - | - | 1 | 1 |
| "Independent" | - | - | - | 43 | 43 |
| Invalid / blank notes | - | - | - | - | - |
| Total (turnout 57.98%) | 20,759,472 | 100.00% | 225 | 225 | 450 |
| Source: Proportional votes , constituency seats, Central Electoral Commission (Ukrainian) | |||||
voter turnout
The turnout was 57.98%. This is the lowest turnout in an election for the Verkhovna Rada since gaining independence in 1991.
Criticism of the choice
The election is seen by many observers, MEPs, institutions, organizations and members of the opposition as a “step backwards”. In a communiqué, the OSCE announced that the conditions of the election campaign were "unfair". The Swiss politician and member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Andreas Gross , was quoted in the above-mentioned OSCE communiqué as saying "Ukraine deserves better".
The CDU politician and chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Bundestag, Ruprecht Polenz, criticized the elections with the words: "One thing is clear, by our standards the elections were certainly not held". Polish election observers in the Oblasts of Kharkiv , Poltava and Sumy announced that there had been no manipulation or other impairment in the three areas mentioned above. The parliamentarian Mateusz Piskorski can be quoted in German as “I would like to say that I am not aware of any case in which votes were bought or other impairments or electoral manipulation took place”. Piskorski were detected in 2015 by the Polish domestic intelligence service working with Russian intelligence services.
On November 8, 2012, the resigning parliament approved the motion of the Central Election Commission to cancel the results in five single-electoral districts and to repeat the election. The electoral commission was unable to determine a valid result in these constituencies, since irregularities and manipulations had apparently occurred during the transport of the ballot papers, the counting of votes and the feeding of the results into the electronic database.
Web links
- Rudolf Hermann: Elections as the litmus test of democracy. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . September 20, 2012, accessed September 24, 2012 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ NEWSru.ua : Президент переніс дату виборів на 14 грудня ( Memento of January 13, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Korrespondent.net : Ющенко переносит досрочные парламентские выборы на 2009 год
- ↑ Update: Ukraine court rules Yanukovych coalition legal , Kyiv Post (April 8, 2010)
- ↑ Early parliamentary elections may take place in May - Ukraine's Yanukovych , RIA Novosti (January 25, 2010)
- ↑ NEWSru.ua: Ющенко оголосив розпуск Верховної Ради ( Memento from October 10, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ NEWSru.ua: Коаліціада: стару більшість розпустили, а нової може не бути ( Memento from October 7, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ NEWSru.ua: Ющенко оголосив розпуск Верховної Ради ( Memento from October 10, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ NEWSru.ua: Київський суд призупинив указ Президента про позачергові вибори ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Ukrajinska Pravda : Гонка рейтингів: нові тенденції ( Memento from March 15, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ http://www.osce.org/odihr/96675
- ↑ Kyiv Post People First: The latest in the watch on Ukrainian democracy [1]
- ↑ Kyiv Post Central Election Commission: Germany to send supervisors for elections in Ukraine [2]
- ↑ europa.eu: Members of European Parliament will observe parliamentary elections in Ukraine (English) [3]
- ^ Neue Zürcher Zeitung : Elections as the litmus test of democracy [4]
- ↑ Die Welt : Ukraine needs a signal from the EU
- ^ Neue Zürcher Zeitung : Elections as the litmus test of democracy
- ↑ Reuters : Election in Ukraine strengthens President Yanukovych
- ↑ Kyiv Post : Polish observers see no violations during elections in Kharkiv, Poltava, Sumy regions
- ^ Voice of Russia : No violations during Ukrainian parliament elections: European observer
- ↑ http://wyborcza.pl/1,75398,20132090,abw-partie-zmiana-zalozyli-rosjanie.html
- ↑ Neue Zürcher Zeitung : Dispute over replacement elections and recounts in the Ukraine
