Home > 6 Political parties > UKRAINE - Opinion on the Amendments to the Law on Elections Regarding the Exclusion of Candidates from Party Lists
 
 
 
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Paragraph 8
 

This law raises a number of issues which shall be indicated below:


a. The first issue relates to the power of political parties to remove a candidate or change his/her ranking on the party list after an election has taken place in the interim period between the election and the time when the Central electoral commission declared him/her as elected. Article 81 of the Constitution of Ukraine allows the disqualification of an elected member who, having been elected as part of one political formation, then moves to another political formation within the period of the same legislature for which he or she was elected. The Law introduces the possibility of a disqualification without specific conditions. The lapse of time between the election day and the declaration of a candidate as elected may be several years for candidates who were not elected immediately but were next on the list.


b. The second issue is whether the wording indicated in the above paragraph, as delineated in Section II Clause 3 of the Law is limited to the electoral process in 2014 or whether it can also be applied to all subsequent electoral processes.


c. The third issue is that this is a retrospective law which declared in 2016 that its scope covers electoral lists of candidates for people’s deputies of Ukraine from political parties, which had been subject of the electoral process in 2014.


d. The fourth issue is that the Law is not clear as to the powers of the Central electoral commission and a possibility to appeal against the decision of a party congress for the candidates excluded from the list.