Documents

On January 20, 2020, the president of Russia submitted to the State Duma a draft law on amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation. To pass these amendments, authorities have also proposed to call an "all-Russian vote". These attempts to amend the constitution by calling such a vote instead of through existing legal procedures like a referendum raise serious concerns among Russian election experts about the legality of the constitutional change.

EMDS notes that there have been cases of pressure against civil society, political activists, candidates, and their relatives in both stages of the Parliamentary elections. The government failed to demonstrate any political will to release more than 100 people who are in jail with politically motivated charges as a result of increased political repression over the last few years.

EMDS's observation of the municipal elections demonstrates that the elections were held in an environment with severe restriction of political freedoms, lack of equal and authentic opportunities for competition, and widespread violations during voting and vote-counting processes. The elections were marred with the lack of alternative choices and therefore did not adhere to the requirements of the national legislation and international standards of free and fair elections and did not represent the true will of Azerbaijani public.

To provide an outlook for the upcoming 2020 elections in Georgia, ISFED describes in this policy paper the current political deadlock in the country caused by the ruling party failing to vote for the introduction of a proportional electoral system. ISFED analyzes a potential solution for this deadlock surrounding the electoral system and necessary changes in the Election Code and political party finance regulations to ensure that the 2020 parliamentary elections are conducted in a democratic, free and fair manner.

The parliamentary vote on the draft Electoral Code planned for this week has been postponed. Earlier, EPDE members Civic Network OPORA and the Committee of Voters of Ukraine raised serious concerns about some provisions of the draft and pointed to a number of shortcomings resulting from last minute amendments to the draft. This policy alert analyses these shortcomings and calls on the Verkhovna Rada to present the final draft Electoral Code to the public in a timely manner in order to ensure transparency.

According to the “Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections”, these elections do not meet international standards of democratic and free elections for a number of reasons: lack of equal access to state media for all candidates, lack of impartial election commissions, use of administrative resource in favor of pro-government candidates, numerous cases of coercion of voters to participate in early voting, and intransparent vote counting procedures. 

In general, local executive committees created favorable conditions for election campaigning and the number of places for holding public events increased in comparison with the elections of 2016. However, election campaigning was low key and administrative resources were widely used to promote the pro-government candidates, while non-affiliated and opposition candidates reported that their political campaigns were censored and there were cases of bans on broadcasting the campaign speeches of opposition candidates.