Arseniy Yatsenyuk at the polling station: I expect from the local elections repairing roads, schools, hospitals and appropriate use of local funds

On Sunday, October 25, Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk took part in the voting to elect deputies of local councils, heads of villages and city mayors.

Answering a reporter's question what he expects from the elections, the Prime Minister said: "These are local elections, so I expect the roads, schools, hospitals repaired and appropriate use of the local budget, as we have transferred billions of resource to the local level".

He noted that in the ballot paper "party affiliation still prevails over the individuality representing a party". "I have carefully studied the voting paper. And I am falling under the impression that we voted in favour of open lists, and, as a result, anyway party affiliation takes precedence over the personality representing a particular party".

Arseniy Yatsenyuk reminded that the law on local elections had been fundamentally and radically changed: "For the first time we vote under such a law, and under the new law summarizing the results of voting requires professional skills of members of election commissions and honesty, transparency and strict control from observers and members of election commissions".

He accentuated that the Central Voting Commission is responsible for organization of the ballot: "The Government is obliged to provide funding for the election campaign and we fulfilled that, while the Ministry of Internal Affairs is obliged to ensure order, what we also did."

The Prime Minister recalled that there had been summoned a meeting of the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ board together with public organizations, including the Opora (Support) PO, "with the aim to establish a serious cooperation to prevent fraud": "Now the essential thing is summarizing the results of the vote to ensure these elections to be fair and transparent, like the elections of the President and Parliament last year".

It should be noted that the party headed by the Prime Minister of Ukraine does not participate in local elections.