by Hatice Kesgin
KIEV
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s party, People's Front, won the early elections held on October 26, the country’s electoral authority announced on Friday.
The Central Election Commission of Ukraine has completed the vote count and announced that nationwide voter turnout was 52.42%. The results show that six parties have exceeded the threshold of 5% and entered the Verkhovna Rada, the parliament of Ukraine.
The People’s Front, led by Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, secured the lead with 22.17% of the vote; the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko, led by the mayor of Kiev, Vitali Klichko, won 21.82%; Samopomich, led by the mayor of Lviv, Andrii Sadovyi, received 11.01%; the Opposition Bloc, led by former Vice Premier Yuriy Boiko, received 9.35%; Radical Party, led by Oleh Liashko, attained 7.44%; and finally, Fatherland, led by Yuliya Tymoshenko, obtained 5.68% of the vote.
Meanwhile, the Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU) could not pass the five percent threshold necessary for entry into the country’s new parliament for the first time in its history.
In the Verkhovna Rada, composed of 450 deputies, half of them are chosen from the party lists, and the other half are selected according to the single member constituency system.
The initial report shows that 225 deputies were elected from the list of political parties while 198 deputies were elected from their own constituencies in which they are independent candidates. However, due to the conflict in eastern Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea that started on November 2013, independent MPs in 27 electoral districts could not be chosen.
The detained Ukrainian pilot Nadia Savchenko, who is held in detention in Russia, was also elected as a deputy from Tymoshenko's party. The rebels shot down the woman pilot Savchenko’s aircraft during the battle between pro-Russian separatists and the Ukrainian army and she was arrested and taken to Russia. She is accused of participating in the air strikes that killed two Russian journalists.
In addition, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s son Aleksey led in his constituency and became a member of the parliament.
Turnout in the election reached 52.42 percent of the more than 30 million eligible voters, the central electoral commission said. A total of 15 million 963 thousand 543 voters went to polls and the official election results are expected on November 10.
The last general elections in Ukraine were held in October 2012 before dramatic events gripped the country.
Last year's Maidan protests led to Moscow-backed former president, Viktor Yanukovych, to flee the country after he refused to sign a deal to have closer ties with the EU.
Pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine have been continuing their attacks in the eastern part of the country, despite a ceasefire between Kiev and pro-Russian rebels signed on September 5.
Semi-autonomous Crimea unilaterally decided to join the Russian Federation in March, while thousands of people have been killed in eastern Ukraine in clashes between the Ukrainian army and pro-Russian separatists since Kiev launched its anti-terror operations in mid-April.
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