Ukraine sums up the results of the early parliamentary elections that took place on Sunday, October 26. The turnout at the elections made up 52.42 percent. The Kiev authorities previously acknowledged that they would not be able to hold elections in a half of election districts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions due to the ongoing military conflict.
According to the Central Election Commission of Ukraine, the processing of 25.5 percent revealed the leadership of the Popular Front of Prime Minister Yatsenyuk (21.68%) and Poroshenko's Block (21.64%). Self-Assistance, headed by Lviv mayor Andriy Sadovy, received 10.57% of the vote; Opposition Bloc of Yury Boiko - 9.6%. The Radical Party of Oleg Lyashko won 7.63%, Fatherland of Yulia Tymoshenko - 5.87%, reports Interfax.
Most likely, the Communist Party and the Right Sector nationalist movement will not be represented in the Verkhovna Rada. Communists gained 3.9%, whereas the Right Sector - a bit more than one percent of votes.
Earlier, based only on the results of exit polls, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk said that his Popular Front would start establishing a coalition with Poroshenko's Bloc. Meanwhile, the chairman of Poroshenko's Bloc, Yury Lutsenko, said that he and his party would set forth an initiative to withdraw immunity from higher officials.
Outside Ukraine, as many as 112 polling stations in 72 countries were arranged for the vote. The largest number of them - six - was in Russia, five in Germany, as well as in Italy, Poland and the USA. In the US, there were four stations working - in Washington, New York, Chicago and San Francisco. From 2,582 Ukrainian citizens registered as voters there, only five percent voted.
The highest activity on polling stations outside Ukraine was registered in Spain and Poland, where 26% of Ukrainians eligible to vote took part in the elections. In Russia, where six polling stations were set up at the Ukrainian Embassy and five consulate offices, only 765 from about 50,000 eligible to vote Ukrainians participated in the elections.
No candidate registered under the name of Darth Vader has managed to make it to the Verkhovna Rada.
The processing of 28,12 percent of ballots in the Dnepropetrovsk region showed that the leader of the Right Sector radical movement, Dmitry Yarosh, was winning in the 39th election district.
Having declared an intention to cleanse the bureaucratic ranks from all those who found themselves there owing to family ties, the "old guard" will come back to the new parliament of Ukraine, bringing their relatives along instead. For example, in addition to ex-speaker Litvin, his relative will be in the parliament too. Former member of the Party of Regions, ex-MP and ex-governor of the Kharkiv region, Mikhail Dobkin, will become a parliamentarian from the Opposition Bloc, whereas his brother Dmitri Dobkin will most likely be elected in a single-mandate constituency of the Kharkiv region.
In the Donetsk region, 12 parliamentarians took part in the vote - their names were associated with the Party of Regions. However, now they were listed as independent and self-nominated candidates.
The Committee of Voters of Ukraine said that there were several incidents reported during the elections. In the Kirovograd region, a group of provocateurs attacked deputy candidates Sergei Leshchenko Svetlana Zalischuk and Mustafa Nayem.
In the Kiev election constituency No. 217, several incidents were reported.
On Monday morning, a car that was transporting ballots got into an accident, in which three people were killed and five were seriously injured, the press service of the Central Directorate of the Interior Ministry of Ukraine in the Kiev region said. The driver of the car, which was transporting the ballots, lost control of the vehicle, swerved into oncoming traffic and collided with two other vehicles. The driver, the chairman of the election committee from the village of Vishenki of the Kiev region and a member of the same committee were killed on the spot. Several other people suffered serious injuries.
Representatives of the Russian authorities said that they doubted the elections in Ukraine were held democratically. On the contrary, Western officials found that the elections met all international standards.
The State Duma of the Russian Federation respected the choice of those who took part in the vote, the head the Duma Committee on CIS Affairs, Eurasian Integration and Relations with Compatriots, Leonid Slutsky said. However, he added, Russia also "understands that the elections were not free and democratic, because the east and south-east of Ukraine either did not participate in the vote or took part in it in an extremely small percentage of registered voters."
First vice-speaker of the State Duma, first deputy chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Ivan Melnikov, said that the Communist Party did not recognize the elections to the parliament. According to him, the elections to the Verkhovna Rada will replace the "orange" coalition will the "brown" one consisting of "Nazi and Russophobic policy-makers."
Pravda.Ru