OPORA hereby expresses its support to Belarus people in their pursuit for free and fair elections. Systemic violation of international standards and best practices in the organization of elections in the Republic of Belarus led to the delegitimization of the voting results and the campaign winner announced by the Central Election Commission.

In the letter of the Central Election Commission to oblast, district, city and Kyiv district commissions, dated August, 11, 2020, the CEC highlights the peculiarities of job remuneration in August for election commission members who exercise their duties on a permanent basis.

Civil Network OPORA and the Central Election Commission will cooperate to implement the open data policy, including the development and creation of online services adapted for the CEC.

On August 13, Civil Network OPORA and the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine have signed a Memorandum of Cooperation to produce an awareness-rising mini-series about local elections for the platform Diia: Digital Education.

Civil Network OPORA has officially launched a wide-scale observation campaign for the next local and the regular local elections in the territorial communities, scheduled for 25 October 2020. OPORA realizes civic observation to provide impartial assessment of election process and its administration, as well as to prevent electoral violations through an efficient citizen watchdog.

Application of the new electoral framework provokes broad discussion on the level of election administration bodies and expert community. Due to legal ambiguity, the issues arose about the scheduling of the first elections of deputies to district councils and the first local elections in the amalgamated territorial communities (hromadas). OPORA prepared a brief explanation for the most resonant aspects of scheduling the first local elections in 2020.

On August, 08, 2020, on the grounds of conclusions from Donetsk and Luhansk oblast civil-military administrations, the CEC thereby established the impossibility to conduct the first local elections in 10 territorial hromadas in Donetsk Oblast, and in 8 hromadas in Luhansk Oblast. Notably, the local elections will not be organized in the de-facto oblast capital of Luhansk region, the Severodonetsk city, and in other, rather big hromadas of the two regions (Lysychansk, Volnovakha, Avdiyivka, Vu...

In public perception, an expression "democratic and fair elections" would often mean the elections where "our" candidate won. However, there was no understanding that the non-democratic regime could act under the same principle. Electoral democracy may be orchestrated, while voting results could be the consequence of manipulations, disinformation, influence of administrative resource during the campaign, or preventing candidates from running for the office. Elections are truly free when citiz...