Ukraine: September 2007 Archives
It should not surprise anyone that there are already reports of some voting irregularities in the Ukrainian parliamentary election today. There are reports of empty ballots being stuffed into ballot boxes and laying around at polling stations in the country's Donetsk region. This is the area that most strongly supports Viktor Yanukovych and the Party of Regions. Are they trying to repeat what they did in the 2004 election?
Early reports from the exit polls indicate a statistical dead heat. A poll from the Democratic Initiatives Foundation shows the Party of Regions with 35.2% of the vote, and their Communist Party friends with 5.1%. The Orange group is led by the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc with 31.5% and Our Ukraine People's Self Defense Bloc with 13.4%.
A surprise is the People's Party, led by former Verkhovna Rada Speaker Volodmyr Lytvyn, winning enough votes to earn some parliamentary seats. It is not clear which side Lytvyn would back.
More news as it becomes available.
With the Ukrainian Parliamentary election a mere two weeks away, I have decided to conduct a very unscientific poll. I want to get a feeling for people's opinions regarding which political group should win a majority of seats in the Verkhovna Rada.
I have published a poll in the Eastern European/Russian Affairs section of Suite101.com. I have also provided a very brief description of the five major political groups in my latest Suite101 blog.
Since the election is on September 30, the poll will remain open through September 29. Please take a few moments to read up on the election and political groups, and then take a moment to vote in my poll.
If you do not see radio buttons on the poll's page, try the E. European/Russian Affairs topic page (at the bottom).
Thanks for your help.
On September 30, Ukraine will hold a special parliamentary election. This election was mandated by President Viktor Yushchenko after he dismissed the country's Parliament on April 2. The vote was originally supposed to take place in May, but Ukraine was caught in the midst of a political crisis, with opposing political entities unable to come to an agreement on how to deal with the dismissal. At the end of May, President Yushchenko, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, and Verkhovna Rada (Parliament) Speaker Oleksandr Moroz reached an agreement to hold a "valid and constitutional" election in September.
