March 2006

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UKRAINE'S CENTRAL ELECTION COMMISSION DOES NOT RECOGNISE CRIMEA TO STAGE A REFERENDUM ON RUSSIAN LANGUAGE

March 2006 – Ukraine’s Central Election Comission has not allowed the Crimean Supreme Council to stage a local consultative referendum on giving Russian the "status of a second state language" in the peninsula. The referendum was to be held on March 26, simultaneously with the parliamentary and local elections.

The Party of Regions led by former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych collected more than 300,000 signatures in support of this referendum in Crimea and the motion was supported by 53 deputies in the 100-seat Crimean legislature. However, the Ukrainian Justice Ministry then said that Crimean Peninsula's plans to hold a referendum violated national law, since giving state status to a language belongs to the so-called constitutional-system issues in Ukraine and cannot be resolved locally, but requires a nationwide plebiscite. The Crimean Prosecutor's Office has immediately said it will appeal against the parliamentary resolution on the referendum.

The Crimean legislature recommended in February that the commissions for the March 26 parliamentary and local elections serve as the referendum commissions at the same time. The chairman of the Ukraine’s Central Election Comission, Yaroslav Davydovych, told journalists on March 7 that referendum commissions cannot work at the same locations as the parliamentary and local election commissions during the March 26 vote. In particular, Davydovych stressed that the law bans members of local election commissions from simultaneously performing the duties of members of referendum commissions.