Doc. 10394

13 January 2005

Observation of the presidential election in Ukraine – Re-run second round of the election (26 December 2004)

Report

Ad hoc Committee of the Bureau of the Assembly

Rapporteur: Mr Tadeusz Iwiński, Poland, Socialist Group

I.       Introduction

1.       In response to the invitation from Mr Lytvin, Speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament, the Bureau of the Assembly decided on 21 June 2004 to set up an ad hoc Committee to observe the presidential election to be held in Ukraine on 31 October 2004. It appointed Mr Doros Christodoulides to chair the committee and authorised the committee to observe the second round of the election, again under the chairmanship of Mr Christodoulides. On 13 December 2004 it decided to set up an ad hoc Committee to observe the re-run second round of the election, comprising members of the ad hoc committee which had observed the first and second rounds and other interested members of the Assembly proposed by the political groups. The Bureau appointed Mr Iwiński (SOC), Vice-President of the Assembly, as Chair and Rapporteur of this ad hoc committee.

2.       Following the Supreme Court decision of 3 December 2004 to declare the second round invalid, a re-run second round was held on 26 December 2004. The International Election Observation Mission (IEOM), which had been present on the spot since early September 2004, increased its numbers for the occasion and deployed more than 1,300 international observers. More than 12,000 observers were also accredited by the Central Election Commission (CEC).

3.       This was again the framework in which the ad hoc Committee observed the re-run second round. The IEOM comprised the observation missions of the same assemblies as before, together with that of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE/ODIHR). The ad hoc Committee’s observations on the first and second rounds respectively are set out in Doc. 10369, which was discussed at the Standing Committee meeting in Warsaw on 23 November 2004, and in document As/Bur/Ukr (2004) 6 Addendum I, discussion of which the Bureau postponed to its next meeting.

4.       The ad hoc Committee which observed the re-run second round of the presidential election comprised the following members:

Socialist Group (SOC)

Mr Abdulkadir ATEŞ       Turkey

Ms Tana de ZULUETA       Italy

Ms Jane GRIFFITHS       United Kingdom

Mr Andreas GROSS       Switzerland

Ms Jelena HOFMAN       Germany

Mr Tadeusz IWIŃSKI       Poland

Mr Jerzy JASKIERNIA       Poland

Mr Geert LAMBERT       Belgium

Mr Algirdas SYSAS       Lithuania

Ms Katrin SAKS       Estonia

Mr Tom COX       United Kingdom

Group of the European People’s Party (EPP/CD)

Mr Georges COLOMBIER       France

Mr Andres HERKEL              Estonia

Mr Murat MERCAN       Turkey

Mr Pasquale NESSA       Italy

Ms Elsa PAPADIMITRIOU       Greece

Mr Andrea RIGONI       Italy

Mr Jan RZYMEŁKA        Poland

Liberal, Democratic and Reformers Group (LDR)

Mr Gourgen ARSENYAN       Armenia

Mr Jonas ČEKUOLIS       Lithuania

Mr Stef GORIS       Belgium

Mr Shavarsh KOCHARYAN       Armenia

Ms Hanne SEVERINSEN       Denmark

European Democratic Group (EDG)

Mr Mevlüt ÇAVUŞOĞLU       Turkey

Group of the Unified European Left (UEL)

Mr Doros CHRISTODOULIDES       Cyprus

Ms Kateřina KONEČNÁ       Czech Republic

Secretariat

Mr Vladimir DRONOV, Head of the Interparliamentary Cooperation Unit

Mr Chemavon CHAHBAZIAN

Ms Olga KOSTENKO

Mr David CUPINA

Mr Angus MACDONALD

Ms Farida JAMAL

Ms Alexandra ALLEON

5.       The ad hoc Committee met in Kyiv from 25 to 27 December 2004 and held talks with the following persons: Mr Borys Tarasiuk, a representative of Mr Yushchenko, former Minister for Foreign Affairs, (Mr Yanukovich’s representative had declined the invitation), Ms Maryna Stavnyichuk, Vice-President of the CEC, and Ambassador Geert-Hinrich Ahrens, Head of the OSCE/ODIHR Observation Mission, and his team of analysts and logisticians. The programme of the Committee’s talks is reproduced in Appendix 1.

6.       On polling day the ad hoc Committee members formed seventeen teams which observed the election operations in Kyiv, Odessa and Donetsk.

7.       The ad hoc Committee renews its thanks to the OSCE/ODIHR Observation Mission and the Council of Europe Information Office in Ukraine for their valuable co-operation and their logistical and technical support.

8.       The IEOM concluded that the re-run second round of the presidential election in Ukraine moved substantially closer to meeting the criteria of the Council of Europe, the OSCE and other international organisations for the holding of democratic elections. The IEOM’s press release of 27 December 2004 is reproduced in Appendix 2.

II.       Sequence of events leading to the re-run second round

9.       On 22 November 2004, in the light of the preliminary results scored by the candidates in the second round, the CEC declared the outgoing Prime Minister, Viktor Yanukovich, the winner of the presidential election. Citing allegations of massive fraud and irregularities, some of which tallied with the observations made by the IEOM, Mr Yushchenko refused to accept the election results and called on his supporters to launch a campaign of strikes, demonstrations and civil disobedience. Impressive peaceful demonstrations signalling the start of the “orange” revolution – the colour of Mr Yushchenko’s campaign – broke out in Kyiv and other towns in Ukraine on the initiative of his supporters, who were soon joined by crowds. The demonstrations led to a non-violent blockade of several government buildings and slowed down the country’s economy. Mainly young people, most of them from western Ukraine, but also from the east and from neighbouring or nearby foreign countries, camped on a main street in the capital and did not leave until 31 December 2004. On 24 November 2004, however, the CEC published the results of the second round as final, with 49.46 % of the vote in favour of Mr Yanukovich as against 46.61 % for Mr Yushchenko.

10.        In a joint statement on 23 November 2004, the President of the Assembly, the Chairman of the Committee of Ministers and the Secretary General of the Council of Europe expressed their serious concern at the irregularities observed in the second round of the presidential election and asked Ukraine’s political forces to seek a peaceful solution to the crisis in a spirit of respect for Ukraine’s commitments and responsibilities as a member state of the Council of Europe.

11.       On 25 November 2004, the Supreme Court of Ukraine agreed to examine the complaints lodged by Mr Yushchenko and suspended publication of the election results.

12.        On the same day, the President of the Assembly made a statement urging the two candidates and the Ukrainian authorities to seek a solution to the political crisis in a spirit of respect for the law and to refrain from any provocative action that could lead to violence.

13.       Parliament passed a non-binding vote of no-confidence in the CEC on 27 November 2004 and a vote of no-confidence in Prime Minister Yanukovich’s government on 1 December 2004. On the same day, as a result of mediation by the Presidents of Poland and Lithuania, the Secretary General of the OSCE, the Speaker of the Russian Duma, Mr Solana, the European Union’s High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, and Mr Cimoszewicz, former Foreign Minister of Poland, in his capacity as Chairman of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, the two candidates met and agreed to comply with the Supreme Court’s decisions.

14.       The authorities of some regions in the east of the country (including Donetsk and Luhansk), a majority of which supported Mr Yanukovich, threatened to hold a referendum on self-government - which would have been an illegal act - if Mr Yushchenko were to be declared President. This seriously heightened tensions with the other regions. The outgoing president, Mr Kuchma, opposed this threat. The persons guilty of these acts were subsequently prosecuted.

15.       On 3 December 2004, accepting the complaints of fraud lodged by the opposition and holding that the CEC itself had been guilty of many serious violations, the Supreme Court declared the second round of the presidential election invalid on the grounds that it was impossible to determine the electorate’s will with any certainty. It ordered a re-run of the ballot to be held on 26 December 2004. In a statement on the same day, the President of the Assembly, Mr Peter Schieder, welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision as a sign that the rule of law had prevailed in the effort to find a solution to the political crisis in Ukraine.

16.       On 4 December 2004, the CEC finally gave in and announced the re-run second round in compliance with the Supreme Court judgment. On 8 December 2004, the Ukrainian Parliament succeeded in amending the Electoral Code as requested by the Council of Europe and the OSCE, and at the same time amended the Constitution, ensuring that in the medium term Ukraine would shift from a semi-presidential regime to a parliamentary regime.

17.       The Constitutional Court still had to rule on the amendments to the Electoral Code. It upheld them on 25 December 2004, with the exception of a particularly controversial provision governing the right of people with category one (severe) disabilities to vote at home; the Constitutional Court found this provision unconstitutional because it prevented people with disabilities in other categories from exercising this right (there are four such categories), and set it aside. However, realising that its decision might be a hindrance to people with disabilities who wished to vote, the Constitutional Court allowed these persons to register with their territorial electoral commission (TEC) or their polling station so that they might nevertheless vote at home on polling day, provided that they had expressly requested this in the 24 hours preceding the opening of the polling stations. The Court ordered this decision and the special arrangement to be published in the media and urged the TECs to publicise them, especially in polling stations but also among disabled and chronically ill members of the electorate.

III.       Legal framework

18.       Without going into detail, it should simply be noted that the amendments to the Electoral Code adopted by Parliament on 8 December 2004 were intended to prevent a recurrence of the fraud that had marked the two previous rounds of the election. The new Electoral Code is provisional and applied only to the re-run second round.

19.       Most of the requests made both by the IEOM and by the ad hoc Committee can therefore be regarded as having been met. In no particular order, they include renewing the membership of the CEC, reducing the size of the TECs and the polling station commissions and renewing their membership, ruling out the possibility of expelling members of the electoral commissions at a late stage, rationalising the production of postal ballot papers and postal vote certificates with a view to preventing abuse, requiring the CEC to publish the number of registered voters and guarantee access to information on the voter lists for representatives of the candidates, reducing the number of identity papers that people were allowed to produce for identification purposes and restricting the number of electors with disabilities entitled to vote at home (as indicated above, this last provision was declared void by the Constitutional Court).

20.       The only unresolved issues remaining after this reform were the precise role of the police, the status of non-partisan groups of local observers and the prompt publication of all polling station results.

IV.       Organisation of the election

21.       The membership of the electoral administrative bodies was altered at the same time as the adoption of the amendments to the Electoral Code. In brief, the membership of the CEC was altered as follows: its Vice-President, Mr Yaroslav Davidovich, became President, four members of the former CEC (including the President) were removed and three others who had been nominated again were not approved by Parliament. Membership of the TECs and the polling station commissions was also renewed to ensure an equal number of representatives of the two candidates.

22.       The CEC was faced with the huge task of preparing the election in 18 days and may be considered to have met the challenge with great vigour. For example, it succeeded in printing more than 38 million ballot papers in record time.

23.       An interesting about-turn also took place at a certain level of the state administration and among certain employees of state bodies. The outgoing Prime Minister’s loss of influence is a factor that may explain the less active use of administrative resources for his campaign.

24.       The Supreme Court acted more efficiently and fairly in dealing with the breaches of the law and complaints observed during the first round of the elections and set aside a number of decisions taken by the CEC on the subject. Generally speaking, the Supreme Court’s decisions on the cases before it seem to comply with the law.

V.        Voter lists

25.       Only very few improvements could be made to the accuracy of the voter lists for the re-run second round and most observers found that the lists remained inaccurate. The new Electoral Code did not really succeed in resolving this problem but did nevertheless ensure that it was not once again a source of major fraud.

26.       The voter lists, which the TECs were to prepare by 20 December 2004, should have been based on those used for the first round of the election and should have included the names and details of the persons added at the time of the first round following an application to a court or a TEC, as well as those of persons who had reached voting age since the second round. However, the TECs were set up only on 18 December 2004 and a number of them were unable to draw up good lists or made parallel use of the lists used both for the first round and for the second round. Deceased persons thus continued to appear on the lists in spite of their families’ protests. The polling station commissions were able to make only minor corrections; discontented electors were able to apply to a court to get themselves registered on the lists.

27.       The use of postal vote certificates, which were of such concern to the ad hoc Committee in the past, was substantially restricted insofar as corrections could no longer be made to the voter lists with the aid of these certificates. Until then, a postal vote certificate enabled an elector to register on the voter list of a polling station located outside the zone of his or her place of residence and to vote in that polling station; however, during the re-run second round, the new Electoral Code got round the problem of abuse of this right by authorising voting by these means only in a single polling station per TEC district, rather than in all polling stations. Moreover, although almost 200,000 of these postal vote certificates had been printed, only 37,000 electors asked for them. Voting in the special polling stations took place virtually without incident.

28.       Lastly, the list of identity papers that could be shown as proof of identity was restricted, with a special arrangement for internal passports expiring on 1 December 2004, which were accepted.

VI.       Election campaign and media

29.       Paradoxically, the campaign, which may be regarded as short, was generally considered to be comparatively quiet. Mr Yanukovich was virtually absent from it. He dismissed both the other candidate and the outgoing President as much the same and simply condemned the “unconstitutional coup d’état”. Mr Yushchenko targeted his campaign at the southern and eastern parts of the country, which appeared to be massively in favour of his opponent.

30.       Few obstacles to freedom of assembly were observed. However, the “freedom train”, a convoy of Mr Yushchenko’s supporters travelling from one town to another, was stopped in Odessa and attacked in Donetsk. The capital of Ukraine was decorated in orange and the members of the “Pora” (“High Time”) movement were everywhere.

31.       The two candidates clashed forcefully, both directly on television and through campaign material and slogans. The news that Mr Yushchenko had indeed been poisoned dominated the public debate shortly before the election.

32.       Some good signals cam from the media, many of which radically changed their attitude and covered the two candidates’ activities in a much more balanced way. There was a remarkable change on the public television channel UT1, for example: before the second round its news programmes had shown a marked bias in favour of Mr Yanukovich, in breach of the channel’s statutory obligations. Only TRK Ukraine and Kanal 5 pursued their biased stance, each in favour of one of the two candidates. The former Prime Minister therefore appeared to have been deprived of the abuse of administrative resources from which he had previously profited.

33.       The other major sign was the disappearance of “temnyky”, the editorial instructions on how to present the news which the Monitoring Committee co-rapporteurs had constantly criticised as a censorship device. The television channels simply stopped complying with them.

VII.       Polling day – vote counting and calculation of the results

34.        The ballot and the vote counting process took place in a calm and orderly fashion in the 200 or so polling stations visited by the ad hoc Committee members. Each side appointed half of the presidents and secretaries of the polling station commissions. Tensions arose here and there between the two candidates’ representatives but the level of tension was overall much lower than during the second round. The most striking feature did no credit to Mr Yanukovich’s side: in Kyiv this candidate’s authorised representatives left most of the polling stations (in a few cases to lodge complaints at once with the TEC) and those who remained there took obvious pleasure in the task of noting the most insignificant incidents as evidence for complaints. Police officers (who were present at the request of the Ministry of the Interior) ostentatiously walked around the polling stations as long as they were open but their presence was not perceived as an attempt to intimidate people and did not bother anyone. The population exhibited great self-control and many people in fact said they were tired of voting. There were a few technical difficulties on polling day; two teams observed that it had not been possible to set up the ballot boxes in their polling station and that smaller ballot boxes had been installed instead.

35.       There was a certain amount of confusion over voting at home, since the TECs had not always informed the polling stations in time that they could disregard the Constitutional Court judgment on this point to enable electors with disabilities who so wished to make use of this facility (provided that they complied with the time-limit for registering on the voter lists). Paradoxically, the Constitutional Court judgment was sometimes fully applied and the home voting arrangement most widely used in the eastern parts of Ukraine. On this point, tribute should be paid to the presence of mind and sense of democracy of many members of polling station commissions, who did not hesitate to send cars to fetch voters with disabilities who had been unable to register on the voter lists in time and take them to the polling stations. Members of the ad hoc Committee witnessed these touching scenes. Several teams observed the home voting, which went very well, so it could no longer be said that an excessively high proportion of voters had used mobile ballot boxes (a problem that mainly concerned the eastern regions).

36.       The CEC announced preliminary results for voter participation on polling day at 10am and 5pm. The next morning, the voter participation rate was now anomalous only in a few polling stations in the eastern part of the country. For the first time the CEC was able to announce preliminary polling station results early on the morning after the election.

VIII.       Epilogue, conclusions and recommendations

37.       While the second round of the presidential election on 21 November 2004 failed to meet many of the criteria of the Council of Europe, the OSCE and other international organisations for the holding of democratic elections, the re-run second round was quite different. There can be no doubt about the outcome of this round: the result of the election, which Mr Yushchenko won by 52% of the vote against 44.19% for Mr Yanukovich, may be regarded as the expression of the Ukrainian people’s free choice (with a participation rate slightly exceeding 77%).

38.       In the ad hoc Committee members’ view, the poll was honest and transparent. This election moved substantially closer to meeting the standards of the Council of Europe, the OSCE and other international organisations. Contrary to Mr Yanukovich’s allegations, the Committee did not observe any blatant or even major violations, simply some minor mistakes. At the time of writing this report, the CEC told the press that it would be in a position to announce the official results “very soon”, after examining 175 of the 225 records of the poll. It is almost certain that the CEC will be in a position to announce the final results of the poll within the statutory time-limit, ie by 10 January 2005.¹

39.       On 30 December 2004 the CEC dismissed a complaint by Mr Yanukovich to the effect that it was impossible to establish the results of the poll because of the violations committed. It rejected three further complaints on 3 January 2005. On 31 December 2004, while claiming to be the “legitimate” winner of the election, Mr Yanukovich nevertheless resigned as Prime Minister of his own free will; as his chances dwindled, his intention of applying to the Supreme Court appeared to fade as the deadline for doing so approached, although one of his indirect representatives on the CEC announced that he was going to appeal to the Supreme Court against the dismissal of the first complaint lodged or against the results. No further information was available at the time of writing. The only certainty was that the date of the inauguration ceremony had been set and that

Mr Yanukovich had not reappeared in public since his televised resignation. The atmosphere of defeat on Mr Yanukovich’s side was compounded by news of the death of the Transport Minister, one of the most influential men in the outgoing cabinet, Mr Heorhiy Kyrpa, which may be linked to Mr Yushchenko’s victory.

40.       In conclusion, the positive elements observed during the pre-election period and the poll may be listed as follows. Abuse of the State’s administrative resources in favour of one candidate decreased, freedom of association was more effectively safeguarded, media coverage was much more balanced, the notorious “temnyky” – editorial instructions issued to journalists to control the political content of news programmes, which the Monitoring Committee co-rapporteurs had condemned time and again – disappeared, and there were fewer instances of state employees and state bodies being blackmailed to vote in favour of a given candidate. The system of postal vote certificates, which was open to fraud and abuse, was also revised. At the end of the day, the electoral process went much better than in the past.

41.       The few remaining shortcomings were firstly the inaccuracy of the voter lists (which is incidentally not specific to Ukraine), bearing in mind that they can be manipulated and tampered with (which was not necessarily the case in this election), and secondly, the lack of clear provisions in the Electoral Code on the role of the police, the obligation to publish the final results promptly and measures to encourage non-partisan organisations to take part in observing the election. On a very specific point, it is also regrettable that the Constitutional Court judgment on voting at home was given so late.

42.       The ad hoc Committee is convinced that the new Ukrainian authorities will be able to remedy these deficiencies before the next general election in 2006.

43.       The ad hoc Committee congratulates the Ukrainian people on the manner in which the country extricated itself from a situation that was both difficult and improbable. Together with the President of the Assembly, who made a statement on the subject on 28 December 2004, the ad hoc Committee hopes that the new President elect of Ukraine, Mr Yushchenko, will accept the invitation to address the Parliamentary Assembly during the January 2005 part-session.

APPENDIX 1

Ad hoc Committee for the Observation of the

Presidential Election in Ukraine – Re-run second round

(26 December 2004)

PROGRAMME

Friday 24 or Saturday 25 December 2004

Arrival of the ad hoc committee members.

All members will be met at the airport and taken to their hotel:

President Hotel

12, Hospitalna St.,

01023 Kyiv, Ukraine

Tel.: + 380 44 220 41 44

Fax : + 380 44 220 45 68

Saturday 25 December 2004

President Hotel – Conference room

10:00        Meeting with a representative of Mr Yushchenko’s side

12:00       Meeting with the Vice-President of the Central Electoral Commission

16:00        Opening by the heads of delegations

16:30        Presentation by OSCE/ODIHR experts

18:00        LTO briefing

18:30        Meeting with drivers and interpreters

Sunday 26 December 2004

Observation of the re-run second round of the presidential election

Monday 27 December 2004

08:00       Meeting of the ad hoc committee (working breakfast)

08:30       Joint debriefing (OSCE Parliamentary Assembly)

16:00       Press conference

Departure of ad hoc committee members

Tuesday 28 December 2004

Departure of ad hoc committee members

Note: the Rapporteur gave numerous interviews to both local and international media, including Russian ones, and took part in several live programmes.

APPENDIX 2

Repeat second round of election brings Ukraine substantially closer to meeting international standards

KYIV, 27 December 2004 - The repeat second round of the presidential election in Ukraine on 26 December brought Ukraine substantially closer to meeting international standards. Throughout the election an engaged civil society demonstrated an active interest in the democratic process, concluded the International Election Observation Mission in a preliminary statement released today in Kyiv. The mission deployed a record number of 1,370 observers from 44 countries for the election.

In its conclusions, the mission noted that campaign conditions were markedly more equal, observers received fewer reports of pressure on voters, the election administration was more transparent and the media more balanced than in the previous rounds.

“I cannot express to you how delighted I am to say that in our collective view Ukraine’s elections have moved substantially closer to meeting OSCE and other European standards in such a short period of time,” said Mr. Bruce George, President emeritus of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and the Special Co-ordinator for the short-term observers. “In our judgment the people of this great country can be truly proud that yesterday they took a great step towards free and democratic elections, by electing the next president of Ukraine.”

The Head of the delegation from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Mr. Tadeusz Iwinski, said: “The Council of Europe did not have a candidate in this election. We respect the choice the people of Ukraine have made and the expression of that choice was clear and democratic. Without prejudging the outcome of the official count, I am pleased to announce today that the Bureau of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly is extending an invitation to the new president of Ukraine to address its plenary session in late January.”

Mr. Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, Head of the European Parliament delegation added: “Ultimately it was the Ukrainian citizens that deserve most credit, due to their refusal to accept the authorities’ attempt to deny them the right to freely elect their president.”

“Our Mission’s findings contrast sharply with those from previous rounds, and they show that the Ukrainian people are committed to democratic principles and practices,” said Mr. Karl Lamers, Deputy head of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly delegation.

Ambassador Geert-Hinrich Ahrens, Head of the OSCE/ODIHR’s long-term observation mission, stressed the need to build on the progress that has been made. “Building blocks have been put in place for any future democratic elections in this country. There has been great improvement in the work of the election administration, in particular, the Central Election Commission. We hope that further improvements will follow, regarding, for instance, non-partisan domestic observers and the voter lists.”

Positive elements of the pre-election campaign period included fewer examples of abuse of state resources, freedom of association was respected, media coverage was significantly more balanced, editorial instructions (temnyky) issued to journalists disappeared and there were far fewer reports of people dependent on the State for their livelihood being pressured in their choice of candidate.

However, some shortcomings remained, such as poorly prepared voter lists, inflammatory campaign material and the failure to incorporate provisions in the newly amended electoral legislation clarifying the role of the police on election day, requiring the Central Election Commission to publish all polling station results promptly and permitting non-partisan election observation.

On election day, a vast majority of observers assessed the process much more favourably than in the two previous rounds. On the whole, polling was conducted in a calm atmosphere.

There was insufficient time to correct errors in voter lists and once again some citizens were turned away from polling stations because their names did not appear on the lists. Relatively few voters had their names added to voter lists on election day.

Observers noted some confusion in the handling of voting by homebound voters. However, ad hoc solutions to the problem were also observed, for instance in providing transportation for elderly and immobile voters to polling stations.

The Central Election Commission announced preliminary results by polling stations for the first time. The speed with which election results were announced and the transparency of the announcement stand in marked contrast to the previous two rounds and serves to reassure voters and candidates of the accuracy of the election results.

The IEOM included 1,370 observers from the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE/ODIHR), the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the European Parliament, and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. A final report will be released approximately six weeks after the completion of the electoral process.

For further information contact:

Urdur Gunnarsdottir, OSCE/ODIHR Spokesperson: +48 603 683 122 or: +38 066 132 9089, Urdur@odihr.pl

Jan Jooren, Press Counsellor, OSCE Parliamentary Assembly: +45 4041 1641, jan@oscepa.dk

Angus Macdonald, Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly: +33 630 496 820, Angus.Macdonald@coe.int

Pia Vanneste, European Parliament, +32 2284 5666, pvanneste@europarl.eu.int

Svitlana Svyetova, NATO Parliamentary Assembly, +32 473 931 961, ssvetova@nato-pa.int

¹        After the drafting of this report, the CEC announced the official results on 10 January 2005 giving Mr Yushchenko as winner. Mr Yanukovich appealed against this decision.