Eastern region vote count delays raise concern in Ukraine election

The Democracy Development Foundation will postpone issuing its election observation preliminary statement today and will immediately increase the size of its observation teams in eastern regions where apparent problems are affecting the vote tabulation.

While more than 72% of the ballots nationwide have been counted as of 12:30 today, regional election commissions in Luhansk, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhiya, Mykolaiv and Kherson are reporting at a much slower rate than the rest of the country. The delays in these regions appear to be similar in pattern to those which occurred there during the fraudulent first and second rounds of the presidential elections in Ukraine in 2004.

Concerns were raised after the DDF observers noted that there has clearly been an attempt made to slow the process of reporting in these five oblasts. Furthermore, CEC Chairman Yaroslav Davidovych raised similar concerns on Election Day over the slow pace of the reporting process in these regions, as well as in Donetsk.

The Democracy Development Foundation will investigate the current counting process and will not make a statement on the parliamentary election until the tabulation process has been completed.

The Democracy Development Foundation, a Ukrainian NGO, is overseeing a team of 139 short term observers from ten countries which include: Moldova, Czech Republic, Uzbekistan, Canada, Japan, Greece, Switzerland, Germany, the United Kingdom and the USA. Observers were deployed to every regions in Ukraine, and conducted pre-election meetings with various parties, members of the local media and election commissions, along with observing both the parliamentary and local elections on March 26.

The Democracy Development Foundation is a fully registered Ukrainian non-governmental organization dedicated to promoting democratic development in Ukraine.