About 1.4 million IDPs fail to vote

About 1.4 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) failed to vote in the local elections, held in Ukraine on October 25.

Having not provided the IDPs with the opportunity to vote, the government did not provide them with the opportunity to reintegrate into the communities where they actually reside now, said coordinator of the electoral and parliamentary programs of the OPORA civil network Olha Aivazovska, the Radio Liberty reports.

“It is the great shame for Ukrainian politicians and elections. The tactic ‘to stick head in the sand’ resulted in that the decision was made neither for nor against. On October 7, when the draft law on IDPs was considered (there are three bills, one of them has been prepared by the NGOs and signed by MPs from different factions), the MPs simply fled, the quorum disappeared, and it became clear that nothing could be done at the legislative level,” Aivazovska said.

According to the expert, sooner or later Ukraine will have to decide on the electoral rights of the citizens who have left their place of registration.

“The trouble is that was very negative decision in terms of the strategy. Sooner or later we will be forced to make this decision through political, diplomatic or international pressure, as it was in Georgia … We lost face in terms of the strategy because it is the feature of discrimination, it is omission to act towards the rights of the internally displaced persons,” Aivazovska stressed.

According to the experts, the number of voters from the occupied Crimea and some areas of Donbas is about 1.4 million people.

Earlier, representative of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights Mykhailo Chaplyha said that depriving immigrants of the right to vote is the serious form of discrimination.