UCC WELCOMES FINAL REPORT OF CANADIAN INTERNATIONAL OBSERVER MISSION
OTTAWA -APRIL 4, 2013 - The Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) welcomed the Final Report of the Canadian government sponsored International Election Observer Mission for Ukraine's October 2012 parliamentary elections released by Head of Mission Senator Raynell Andreychuk.
"The Ukrainian Canadian community is grateful that the government of Canada sent this largest ever independent Election Observer Mission to monitor the election process in Ukraine. We noted with interest that the mission concluded that the elections fell short of meeting international standards in regard to free and fair elections," stated UCC National President Paul Grod. "We are thankful to the Canadian government for placing Canada at the vanguard of nations when it comes to promoting and monitoring democracy, human rights and the rule of law in Ukraine."
The government of Canada sponsored a 500 person electoral observation mission including 422 through CANADEM and the remainder through the OSCE. These were in addition to the nearly 300 self-financed observers under the auspices of the Ukrainian World Congress.
The CANADEM Mission concluded that:
"Mission Canada concludes that - taking into account its interim reports, the findings of Election Day, and the subsequent problems in transfer of results and tabulation of data - Ukraine's parliamentary elections fell short of meeting international standards, and that these elections marked a regression in Ukraine's democratic development."
"The Ukrainian Canadian Congress urges the government of Canada to continue to monitor these parliamentary elections through to their conclusion and ensure that the re-elections in the 5 disputed districts are held quickly and monitored to ensure that the results are a true reflection of the will of the Ukrainian people," stated Grod. "These re-elections are taking place in an atmosphere of political recrimination and selective justice as we have seen with several deputies, notably Yulia Tymoshenko's lawyer Serhiy Vlasenko being denied his seat in the Verkhovna Rada. We encourage the government of Canada to continue to pursue the policy of engagement that it set out in its response to the Foreign Affairs Committee's report and findings last fall."
Although some may question the effectiveness of sending a large contingent of election observers to Ukraine, given the erosion of democracy there since the Presidential vote of 2010, Jaroslaw Balan, Chair of the UCC's Canada-Ukraine committee disagrees. "Building a democracy from the wreckage of a totalitarian state is a long and difficult process. As anyone who has ever participated in such a mission knows, the presence of foreign observers acts both as a partial deterrent to massive electoral fraud and provides significant moral support to those Ukrainian citizens fighting to secure a democratic future for their country under very challenging conditions."
The Mission Canada final report is available at: www.canadem.ca
