Category Archives: news

canada, news, politics, ukraine

Observers find flaws with Ukraine elections, recommend electoral reforms

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The Election Observation Mission (EOM) deployed experienced and trained Canadian election observers for the Presidential Elections to attempt to meet internationally accepted standards for free and fair elections. They released a report today finding flaws in the election process and made recommendations on electoral reform:

There remains an overriding concern that the institutionalization of free and fair elections requires a greater exercise of political will at the highest levels.

The EOM noted drawbacks and made several recommendations, contained in the Preliminary Observation Report presented in Kyiv on Feb. 9. The highlights include:

  • It is disappointing to find that the Central Election Commission did not register or accredit a single observer from Georgia for the Second Round, despite various attempts by the Georgian EOM to register their observers
  • If Ukraine wishes to build a strong civil society, and strong and durable democratic institutions that have the respect of the citizenry, it is very important to maintain the right of civil society organizations to monitor presidential elections as an important safeguard for the transparency of the election process
  • CUF recommends the creation of a permanent election civil service at the district and local election committee level. It is our recommendation that Ukraine reform its election laws and process and address the partisan nature of the election commissions at the national, district and local levels.
  • An additional item of electoral reform must be the financing of elections. It is commonly known that the current Presidential elections cost each side over $500 million. As recommended by some members of the European Parliament, Ukraine should bring forward a set of legislative amendments to limit the amount of spending by any candidates to a predetermined, more modest maximum level.

About the EOM:

Election Observation Mission (EOM) of the Canada Ukraine Foundation (CUF), in association with the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC), deployed 65 experienced and trained Canadian election observers in 6 oblasts (regionals) for the First Round of the Presidential Elections and on February 1st, CUF deployed a further 50 observers.

canada, news, olympics

91 year-old appointed for Olympics 2010 Torch Relay

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Looking for the story of 90 year-old Olga Yurechko’s memorial letter? Click here

Update: A video is available of Olga carrying the torch:

From Ukraine House 2010:

91 year-old Ukrainian Canadian, Olga Kotelko, appointed for Olympics 2010 Torch Relay

Olga Kotelko, known as the oldest long jump competitor in the world, was nominated as one of the 12,000 XXI Winter Olympic Games Torch Bearers. She will hold history in her hands, carrying the Olympic flame in the Vancouver 2010 Torch Relay.

Olga will carry the torch on Wednesday, February 10 at 7:45 p.m., on Marine Drive in West Vancouver between 15th and 17th Street.

“I am so very happy and so overwhelmed to have this once-in-a-lifetime experience,” said an emotional Kotelko. “Carrying the Torch represents inspiration, dedication, hope, perseverance and community spirit. To me, this Flame is a shining symbol saluting good health and well being.”

This diminutive and personable former teacher from Burnaby, B.C., Olga is a role model for youngsters, masters and seniors. Since 1997, at the age of 77, Olga Kotelko has been running, jumping and throwing – and breaking Canadian and World records in the W80, W85 and W90 age categories.

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Besides having been named BC’s Masters Athlete of the Year, she has also won the Vancouver YWCA’s Women of Distinction in Sports award. In her West Vancouver community, she is sought after as a motivational speaker for seniors, and is well known in her local elementary school where she coaches the shot put. Olga Kotelko is also included in the Canadian Masters Athletics Hall of Fame.

“I am enjoying the benefits of doing what I started at the age of 77… track and field” she stated. “As the Chinese expression says: “It is not how old we are, it is how we get old!”

Read the rest of the article

About Ukraine House:

Official home of Ukraine’s Olympic team for the 2010 Winter Olympics is being run jointly by the National Olympic Committee of Ukraine, Embassy of Ukraine in Canada and Ukrainian Canadian Congress. Ukraine House will be officially opened on February 11th, 2010 and will be open to the public from February 12th through to the 28th. Located at the Ukrainian Catholic Centre at 3150 Ash Street in Vancouver, BC.

canada, news, politics

Despite corruption and disillusionment, Ukrainian turnout surpassed Canada’s [Article]

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From Gerard Kennedy, MP for Parkdale-High Park in the Toronto Star:
Add in a razor’s edge margin between shifting coalitions within a few points of one another over the last several elections, which makes every single vote consequential.

That was Sunday’s presidential election runoff in Ukraine.

That was also the challenge for an estimated 3,700 international observers, including at least 280 Canadians, trying to cover 35,000 polls in 26 oblasts (provinces) in this country of 46 million.

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Yet the grim context was belied by the mobilization of half a million dutiful citizens to stage the election themselves through national, regional and poll level committees and by a voter turnout higher than during Canada’s last federal election.

The worn schools, factories and volleyball stadiums that housed some of the polling sites often were freezing cold, yet polling station teams of 16 women and men sat for 15-hour shifts, and then sat again in the hallways of municipal buildings waiting for hours more through the night to turn in their bulging bags of ballots and meticulous count protocols to the regional committee.

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The Orange Revolution lives, it seems, underground.

Their humble ambition has already infected hundreds of individual Canadians, many of Ukrainian heritage, who have grown from previous short-term election observers into admirable long-term investors of their personal time, trouble and hope through repeated impressive weeks-long deployments to help regulate the country’s do-it-yourself election efforts.

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Canadian governments, institutions, private companies and NGOs (not only Ukrainian Canadian ones) need to be linked in a strategy to make us a helpful presence that will assist a turnaround for a country that is connected to 1 million Canadians, on the way to forging a mutually beneficial, special social and economic relationship.
news, politics, ukraine

Tymoshenko camp vows to challenge Ukraine vote [Article]

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From the Globe & Mail:

Ukraine’s Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko plans to legally challenge the results of the presidential runoff that opposition leader Viktor Yanukovych is leading, her campaign said Tuesday.

Ms. Tymoshenko’s allies say she will not concede until appeals have run their course and recounts have taken place at a number of disputed polling stations.

According to Ukraine’s election commission, Mr. Yanukovych is leading in Sunday’s vote by 3.5 percentage points with only 0.05 per cent of precincts left to count. Unlike past elections in Ukraine, international monitors have praised this vote as being free and fair.

“We will recognize defeat only after a decision by the courts,” said Andriy Shkil, a prominent member of the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc in parliament. “We will appeal both the preparation and conduct of the election.”

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Ms. Tymoshenko’s allies say the election was marred by fraud.

“A decision has been taken to challenge results in certain polling stations and to demand a recount at those stations,” said Yelena Shustik, a deputy with the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc.

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news, politics, ukraine

Ukraine Tymoshenko’s team cries foul before polls close [Article]

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From the Washington Post:

Prime Minister Tymoshenko, who led the 2004 street protests which propelled her to prominence and humiliated Yanukovich by denying him victory in a rigged poll, has vowed to call people onto the streets again if the current poll is falsified.

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Turchynov alleged that an election commission member from Tymoshenko’s party had been killed defending a safe full of ballot papers although election officials disputed this.

Turchynov, who runs Tymoshenko’s election headquarters, also alleged that voters were being paid for casting ballots for Yanukovich and said there were numerous cases of multiple voting in Donetsk.

He said that a secretary of a local election commission in the western Ivano-Frankivsk region had died after suffering head wounds as he defended a safe with ballot papers from assailants.

But the central election commission said the man had died from a heart attack. Russia’s RIA news agency quoted a local police chief who confirmed the man had died from a heart attack. “And he died outside the polling station,” the officer stressed.

Turchynov said results of the vote could be contested in about 1,000 polling stations in the Donetsk region.

He also complained of some 1.5 million people eligible to vote at home due to bad health, stressing that their vast majority were residents of the pro-Yanukovich eastern Ukraine.

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