The article titled “It’s the people who count…” published in the No 34 of Kyiv Weekly rises legitimate concerns over the procedural side and legitimacy of the upcoming parliamentary elections, according to KW.

“Even as we speak I am convinced there will be problems with legitimacy,” Chairman of the Central Election Commission Volodymyr Shapoval has recently admitted. With that statement he brought the issue of the acceptance of results of the upcoming parliamentary elections, which earlier was only in a small circle of spin doctors, to a qualitatively new level. The author Oleksandra Vasiliyeva believes such a statement was a kind of precautionary measure on behalf of Shapoval who would never agree to blatant vote-rigging and he had no intentions of putting himself in the shoes of the notorious ex-head of the CEC Serhiy Kivalov.

The fact is that the government has control over the majority of the 15 CEC members, which is confirmed by all decisions it made in this year’s parliamentary election campaign. However, any meeting of the commission is plenipotentiary only when a minimum of 2/3 of its members are present. So, if the “oppositional trio” of Ihor Zhydenko, Zhanna Usenko-Chorna and Yulia Shvets will be joined by the “doubting trio”, the work of the CEC may be blocked at any moment and, conversely, will be empowered to suddenly call any meetings of all the heads of the CEC.

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Mahera and Usenko-Chorna are Shapoval’s deputies, but Mahera and Sheludko are already on the hook. In case they jib, it will always be possible to fire them for illegal actions in the Satsyuk case and there remains the opportunity and time to provoke Shapoval and the “oppositional trio” right up until the end of the election process. For this reason, from the point of view of the government everything in the functioning of the CEC is smooth sailing without any complications and any flimflam could backfire on the draw in the commission.

Judging by the level of leverage in the Region’s headquarters and by the number of candidates able to hurdle the threshold in majoritarian districts and on the party ticket, the first fiddle is played by the alliance of Andriy Kluyev’s and Rinat Akhmetov’s groups, the KW article concludes.