Anna Ryzhova, Kyiv, Ukraine:

"Yesterday, Dec. 8th, the Parliament of Ukraine adopted a number of landmark lawmaking decisions. The purpose of these decisions was to apply measures that would prevent fraud in future elections, to remove some powers from the presidency, and to appoint a new Central Election Commission.

Generally, the Dec 8th session was marked by both victories and losses for Ukraine. Among the victories, the Parliament, honoring the Supreme Court decision, has approved the new board of the CEC. The new board now consists of the candidates submitted by the MPs and few officials from the previous board. Notably, the former Chairman of CEC who was accused of being the main actor in mass fraud received the least number of votes and was thus dismissed by definition. Another major change happened during this Parliament session. The General Prosecutor (Attorney General) of Ukraine who failed to put under criminal liability of state officials concerned with crimes during and after the election, publicly resigned from his post.

The biggest victory of that day was the passage of the amendments to the elections law. These amendments contain measures to eliminate the possibility of vote-falsification. For instance, they provide for that nominations to poling stations will be based on parity of two candidates, i.e. each presidential candidate nominates half of the territorial election commissions members. The receipt of an absentee ballot will now be marked on the passport of a voter, etc. The comprehensive outline of the elections law amendments can be found here.

The MPs have also adopted the changes to the Constitution of Ukraine, which are referred to as Constitutional Reform. The goal of this Reform was to balance the powers of the President and the Parliament of Ukraine through the redistribution of the functions of the former between the Parliament and the Cabinet of Ministers. The Constitutional Reform will come into force in September 2005 or in January 2006, if the MPs fail to pass another break of the reform concerning the local administrations. The keystone of the Constitutional Reform is that Parliament will appoint the prime minister, who will appoint his Cabinet and the heads of local administrations. At the moment both these functions are the prerogatives of the president. This document represents a big compromise between candidate Yushchenko and his former rivals in the presidential campaign together with President Kuchma. Both laws have been simultaneously signed by the acting President who arrived to the Parliament for this purpose." [December 9, 2004 – special to JURIST; Anna Ryzhova is an Associate in the Kyiv office of Chadbourne & Parke LLP]