Elections without borders: foreign ministry setting up polling stations
On March 26, Election Day, approximately 387,000 Ukrainian citizens will be casting their votes abroad. This number of potential voters was revealed to journalists by Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, chief of the ministry’s task force in charge of voting at polling stations abroad. Last Friday the list of the voters residing abroad was handed over to the Central Election Commission in Kyiv. It took from June 2005 until January 2006 to draw up this list. According to Nalyvaichenko, all citizens of Ukraine, irrespective of their status abroad, could register: all they had to do was produce their passport. “We don’t care whether people are abroad on a legal or illegal basis. What we need is the passport of a Ukrainian citizen,” the deputy minister stressed. He noted the active participation of both citizens and civic organizations in drawing up the list of voters.
One hundred and fourteen polling stations will be opened in 78 countries. “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs decided that all resources of Ukraine’s diplomatic and consular representations abroad would be tapped to set up polling stations and local electoral commissions,” Nalyvaichenko said. In compliance with Ukrainian law, this number also includes provisional polling stations in areas with a sizable Ukrainian community (more than 1,000 residents) but without any foreign ministry representations, for example, in Porto, Portugal, and soon in Valencia, Spain, and Belci, Moldova. In Russia, Ukrainian citizens will be able to vote at five polling stations: at Ukraine’s embassy in Moscow and consulates in Saint Petersburg, Rostov-on-Don, Tyumen, and at the recently opened consulate in Vladivostok. According to the deputy minister, the situation during the last presidential elections, when about 400 illegal polling stations were created, should not reoccur because the Prosecutor General’s Office has opened a criminal case with regard to that matter.
Ukrainian peacekeepers will also have an opportunity to vote. The Ministry of Defense is going to open polling stations in Ukrainian military units in Serbia and Montenegro, Lebanon, and Liberia. The diplomatic mission of Ukraine in Ethiopia will be the only exception. “The embassy was evacuated because of a difficult domestic political situation, absence of an air link, and lack of infrastructures necessary for the normal functioning of an embassy. So we did not consider setting up a polling station, because we are unable to keep it operational,” Nalyvaiko said.
The deputy foreign minister recalled that for the rerun vote during the presidential elections, about 100,000 Ukrainians cast their ballots outside our country.
