Yevgeni Shevchuk

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Transnistria
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Yevgeni Shevchuk

Yevgeni Shevchuk (Russian: Евгений Шевчук, Ukrainian: Євген Шевчук) (born June 19, 1968 in Rybnitsa, Moldavian SSR, Soviet Union) is an ethnic Ukrainian and a politician from Transnistria, speaker of Transnistrian Supreme Council and one of the leaders of opposition party Obnovleniye (Renewal, in Russian).

Yevgeni Shevchuk is a lawyer who has worked in government and private business. His biography profile describes him as "social democratic technocrat with an European outlook, and a man of profound democratic beliefs". As part of the minority opposition in parliament prior to December 2005, he spearheaded a reform drive by his party to introduce changes to Transnistria's electoral code. Among the changes were a requirement that purely technical qualifications be used as the basis for selecting polling station chairmen and a rule prohibiting state-owned media outlets (radio, TV, newspapers, etc) from publishing results of polls and forecasts related to elections, so as to not influence free voter choice. This was reported in the United States State Department's Country Report on Human Rights Practices 2005.[1]

In a 2005 report the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe referred to Yevgeni Shevchuk in the context of democratic reform, noting that Transnistria is moving towards more pluralism and highlighted the Transnistrian parliament's own initiatives on the reform of the political system which were spearheaded by Yevgeni Shevchuk's bloc.