Author Archive

Alona Shkrum

Alona Shkrum is Member of Parliament at Верховна Рада України. She is a former Pegasus Scholar at the Inner Temple, London and received an LLM at Cambridge University. She was the Treasurer of the Association of Students of International law at the Sorbonne.

Ukrainian politicians have special talent for surprising the international community. First are the results. More eyebrow-raising is special way of organising them. This time Ukraine’s parliamentary elections, held back at the end of October, started quite well. But while the voting process itself has been described as fair by most international observers, the political campaign and the actual counting of the votes – no doubt the most important part of the democratic election process — has been characterized by the abuse of power, the excessive role of money, extraordinary events such as power cuts in the polling stations, fights between representatives of the parties, accusations of fraud and scandals in denying observers access to polling stations.