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14Jul15

Ukraine local elections law doesn't provide for elections in militia-held areas in Donbas

Ukraine's new draft law on local elections which Verkhovna Rada (parliament) adopted on Tuesday does not provide for holding elections in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) on October 25, Ruslan Knyazevich, the head of the parliamentary Committee for legal policy and justice, said as he submitted the draft law to the Rada.

This norm is fixed in the document's final and interim clauses, he said.

The Ukrainian parliament on Tuesday adopted a law on local elections in the second reading by 257 votes out of the required minimum of 226.

Elections to the local self-government bodies scheduled for October 25 may partly be held according to a new election system if Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signs the bill into a law.

The DPR and LPR were categorically against the new draft law because they consider it to be a violation of the Minsk agreements.

On Monday, July 13, Denis Pushilin and Vladislav Deinego, the DPR's and LPR's representatives in the Contact Group for the Ukraine settlement, issued a joint statement in wh cih they said that the new elections law should have been discussed in Minsk and agreed with the representatives of the DPR and LPR. "It is falling out of line with what is being discussed in Minsk and is violating the already reached agreements in part concerning non-participation of political parties and the holding of elections according to the majority system," Pushilin and Deinego said.

Earlier, the DPR and LPR announced that they would hold separate elections on their territories on October 18 and November 1, respectively.

[Source: Itar Tass, Kiev, 14Jul15]
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