Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s party was in the lead with over 22 percent of votes in the country’s Sunday parliamentary elections, exit polls said on Monday. Poroshenko’s bloc was closely followed by two other pro-Europe parties.
With 20.15 per cent of the ballot lists in the election counted, the People’s Front of PM Arseniy Yatsenyuk was gaining momentum with 21.66 of the vote, while the Petro Poroshenko Bloc was trailing slightly behind with 21.65 percent of the vote, with only 134 votes separating them, the RT cited Ukraine’s CEC as reporting.
A total of seven political parties are expected to be represented in Ukraine’s Parliament – Verkhovna Rada. Half of the seats in the 450 member parliament will be filled by the leading blocs, while the other half will be filled by candidates running in single-member constituencies.
However, according to international exit polls, the Poroshenko Bloc took a winning margin with 23 percent and was closely followed by the People’s Front party which got over 21 percent.
“We can say today that a third of voters supports the president’s course for carrying out reforms for entering the European Union,” said Yuriy Lutsenko, the leader of the Poroshenko Bloc.
The Ukrainians voted Sunday to choose from a total of 29 political parties. A party has to pass the threshold of five percent in order to be represented in the Rada. Half of the seats in the 450 member parliament will be filled by the leading blocs, while the other half will be filled by candidates running in single-member constituencies.
Boycott in East
However, voting did not take place in the eastern part of the country in the self-proclaimed people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. Authorities of these regions stated they would not go to the polls and plan to hold elections of their own heads and parliaments on November 2.
Russia has supported the eastern republics saying it will accept the results of both elections.
“It’s now necessary to support fledgling ties between Kiev and the People’s Republics of Lugansk and Donetsk and then to start a comprehensive political dialogue with the purpose of finding ways for reaching national accord and conducting constitutional reform with the participation of all regions and political forces,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the Verdens Gang (VG) Norwegian newspaper on Saturday.
