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Ukraine election a win for president's allies, early count suggests
Ukraine election a win for president and allies, early count suggests
(about 4 hours later)
Pro-Europe parties secured a big win in an election in Ukraine, a partial vote count suggested on Monday, with President Petro Poroshenko hailing people’s support for his plan to end a separatist war and pursue democratic reforms sought by the west.
Two pro-European parties will dominate Ukraine’s new parliament, partial results from Sunday’s poll suggested on Monday morning, with the groups loyal to the president, Petro Poroshenko, and the prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, both winning over 21% of the vote each.
Early figures from the vote count showed that Poroshenko’s bloc and the party of his ally, Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk, were both taking over 21% of the votes cast from a field of 29 competing parties.
Addressing the nation late on Sunday evening, Poroshenko said voters had backed “a democratic, reformist, pro-Ukrainian and pro-European majority” and said the vote would help end the crisis in the east of the country.
Addressing Ukrainians two hours after polling ended on Sunday night, he thanked voters for backing a “democratic, reformist, pro-Ukrainian and pro-European majority”.
“The majority of voters were in favour of the political forces that support the president’s peace plan and seek a political solution to the situation in the Donbass,” said Poroshenko.
“The majority of voters were in favour of the political forces that support the president’s peace plan and seek a political solution to the situation in the Donbass,” Poroshenko said, referring to the region of the industrialised east where government forces have been fighting separatist rebels.
With around a third of the votes counted, the central election commission gave Yatsenyuk’s People’s Front a vote share of 21.57%, fractionally ahead of Poroshenko’s bloc which was on 21.54%.
With more than a quarter of the vote counted, the central election commission gave Yatseniuk’s People’s Front a vote share of 21.67%, fractionally ahead of Poroshenko’s bloc which was on 21.63%.
The result suggested that Poroshenko, a billionaire chocolate tycoon, would probably continue working in tandem with Yatsenyuk, who has been more hawkish on Russia than the president but is considered a safe pair of hands for the economy.
An earlier partial count and exit polls had put Poroshenko’s grouping slightly in the lead.
A number of other parties cleared the 5% threshold required to enter parliament, including the Opposition Bloc, made up of allies of former president Viktor Yanukovych, which polled nearly 10% of the vote. Yanukovych fled the country in February after the Maidan revolution, setting off a chain of events that would see Crimea annexed by Russia and violent conflict break out in the east.
The result showed Poroshenko, a 49-year-old confectionery magnate, was now likely to continue working in close tandem with Yatseniuk, with the latter possibly staying on as prime minister to handle sensitive talks with the west on aid for the war-shattered economy.
Other parties that looked set to make it into parliament included the Fatherland party of former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, which secured just 6% of the vote, according to early results, and the Samopomich party, mainly made up of former Maidan activists.
Though a hawk in dealings with Russia, Yatseniuk is liked in the west for his commitment to deep reforms and astute stewardship of the economy which has been wrecked by the separatist conflict in the eastern regions.
The controversial Radical party of Oleh Lyashko, who has made a name for himself with his unorthodox and potentially illegal escapades in the conflict in the east, and whose party symbol is a pitchfork, also made it into parliament, but other nationalist and far-right parties appear to have failed.
The figures, which roughly confirmed earlier exit polls, put another pro-Europe party from western Ukraine in third place.
The new parliament is likely to contain many former Maidan activists, along with investigative journalists, war veterans and members of volunteer battalions who had been on the party lists for a number of parties. The hope is that Ukrainian politics will finally turn a corner and shed the backroom deal-making and oligarchic control that have characterised it since independence.
Poroshenko said the People’s Front was the “main partner” in any parliamentary coalition and talks to form the majority could begin on Monday. He wanted talks to be wrapped up quickly to form Ukraine’s “best government”.
In the east, polling stations did not open in the areas controlled by separatists, designated as new “people’s republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk.
But a surprise was the strong performance registered by allies of ousted president Viktor Yanukovich. The Opposition Bloc of former fuel minister Yuriy Boiko was on 9.62%, easily enough to put the party into parliament, according to the latest available figures from the count.
The conflict in the east has taken more than 3,000 lives, and Kiev has been forced to temporarily cede control over areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, a decision formalised by an agreement signed in Minsk last month between Russia, Ukraine and the breakaway entities.
Though a fuller picture will not take shape for hours, it was clear a pro-western assembly was emerging from the first parliamentary election since Yanukovich’s overthrow by street protests in February.
There was a conciliatory note from Russia on Monday morning, with the deputy foreign minister, Georgy Karasin, saying Moscow would recognise the result in the elections.
The count gave a partial read-out only of party voting for 225 of the 450 seats in parliament. Results from voting for single constituency seats will be known only in a few days’ time.
“We are waiting for the official results, because there is a lot of contradictory information around, but it’s already clear that despite the harsh and dirty campaign, the elections are valid,” he said. “The balance of power that will come out of this will hopefully allow the Ukrainian leadership to seriously deal with the fundamental problems in society.”
The election completed attempts by Poroshenko and his allies to restore normality to the sprawling country of 46 million after a year of turmoil and violence.
Kiev would argue that one of the most fundamental problems over the past few months has been Russia’s active support for the rebels in the east of the country, at key moments backing them up with regular Russian troops, something Russia has always denied despite mounting evidence to the contrary.
The overthrow of Yanukovich by “Euromaidan” street protests, which broke out when he ditched a deal to take Ukraine closer to Europe and out of the Russian orbit, led to Russia denouncing a “fascist” coup and annexing Ukraine’s Crimea.
The two breakaway statelets will hold their elections next weekend, and have insisted they will never again be part of Ukraine. Only 42% of people in Donetsk region and 26% in Luhansk were able to vote in the Ukrainian elections, according to an election watchdog, and voter turnout in those areas where polling stations did open was low.
Moscow went on to back separatist rebellions in Ukraine’s industrialised east which have killed more than 3,700 people.
Despite the surprise showing of Boiko’s Opposition Bloc, other traditional allies of Russia such as the communists flopped and the makeup of the future pro-Europe assembly seemed likely to spell future tensions with Moscow with which Ukraine is also locked in a dispute over gas prices.
It will be the first time the communists have been out of parliament since Ukraine gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. “We can say today that a third of voters support the president’s course for carrying out reforms for entering the European Union,” said Yuriy Lutsenko, the leader of the Poroshenko Bloc.
With the pro-Europe party Selfhelp in third place on 10.56%, according to the early count figures, Poroshenko should be able to forge a coalition to move Ukraine towards the European mainstream.
Other parties which seemed likely to enter parliament on the basis of the exit poll included the Radical party of populist Oleh Lyashko. The Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party of former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko performed worse than many had expected, but with almost 6% from the partial count was above the bar required to enter parliament.
The outcome suggested many war veterans and “Euromaidan” activists enlisted as candidates will enter parliament, giving it a strong patriotic and nationalist flavour.
Boiko, whose party has criticised Poroshenko’s policies in the east and campaigned in Yanukovich’s power bases there, said on Sunday night he would work for the “removal of the current authorities”.
After battlefield losses, Poroshenko has said he would resolve the conflict in the east only by political negotiations.
Voting did not take place on Sunday in areas held by the rebels or in Crimea. In eastern regions controlled by the army, armed soldiers guarded polling stations under Ukraine’s flag.
Separatist rebels entrenched in the big eastern cities of Donetsk and Luhansk said they were ignoring the Ukrainian election and still planned to go ahead with a rival vote on 2 November to further their calls for independence.
