Diplomatic breakfast “Electoral Reform in Ukraine: How to Speed up the Process?”

We are pleased to invite you to the diplomatic breakfast “Electoral Reform in Ukraine: How to Speed up the Process?”, which will take place on June 13 (Tuesday) at 10:30 am – 12:00 pm.

The diplomatic breakfast is organized by the leading civil society organizations that work in the field of the electoral reform: Civic network OPORA, Internews Ukraine, CHESNO, Election Law Institute, Ukrainian Center for Independent Political Research, Centre for Policy and Legal Reform, Human Rights Platform and the civil society coalition “Reanimation Package of Reforms”.

A number of important reforms have been launched in Ukraine since the Euromaidan, however, the electoral reform – the key one in the field of democracy and accountability of the authorities – is substantially lagging behind. The main tasks of the electoral reform have been formulated by the civil society organizations in the RPR Roadmap of Reforms back on the eve the parliamentary elections in 2014:

– to reform the electoral system to ensure proportional representation of public interests in the Parliament;
– to improve the system of electoral administration, in particular, to reboot the Central Election Commission;
– to ensure the inevitability of punishment for the election-related crimes.

These and other important provisions are also elements of numerous recommendations of the respected international institutions – the Venice Commission, the Council of Europe, and the OSCE/ODIHR. However, none of these objectives were achieved so far due to the lack of political will among the Ukrainian elites.

Leading civil society organizations, which pool their efforts for the sake of the electoral reform are aiming to draw public attention to the need of an open and transparent dialogue concerning the fate of the reform. It should be held well in advance of the upcoming parliamentary election in 2019, while the process itself shall be transparent and comprehensive.

The diplomatic breakfast will be held in order to exchange opinions on the state and prospects of the election reform. This topic will be discussed by the following speakers representing the RPR expert group on the election legislation reform:

Yevhen Radchenko, lead expert of the RPR group on election legislation reform, development director at Internews Ukraine;
Yuriy Kliuchkovsyi, president of the Election Law Institute, associate professor at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy;
Olha Aivazovska, chair of the board of the Civil network OPORA, member of the political sub-group of the Trilateral Contact Group to settle the situation in Donbas.

The event will be moderated by Olena Prokopenko, Head of RPR international relations.

To take part in the event, we would like to kindly ask you to fill in a short registration form by June 12.

Should you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact Olena Prokopenko at olena.prokopenko.rpr@gmail.com or Christina Parandii at kristinaparady@gmail.com.