Poland’s MFA observers at Ukraine’s presidential election

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs reports that Poland has sent 38 short-term observers under the international observation mission to Ukraine’s presidential election runoff, due to take place on February 7th 2010. The international election observers have been registered by Kiev’s Central Election Commission. The first round of Ukraine’s elections, which was held on January 17th 2010, was observed by 25 Foreign Ministry observers.

The OSCE election observation mission was launched in response to Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry’s invitation and following the OSCE Needs Assessment Mission recommendations. Under these recommendations OSCE and ODIHR decided on delegating 60 long-term (LTOs) and 600 short-term observers (STOs) to monitor Ukraine’s forthcoming presidential ballot.

Poland is among the leading contributors to the international observation mission, ranking just behind the US, Canada and Russia. Their role is to observe the polling and counting procedures and to report their findings in order to prevent any inaccuracies that could potentially distort the election result.

Piotr Paszkowski
Press Spokesman