Yanukovych Claims Victory at Parliamentary Elections in Ukraine

Preliminary results released by the Central Election Commission show Yanukovych's Party of Regions ahead with about 35 per cent of the vote.

Speaking on October 28 following the vote, party leader and Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said his party's victory was “obvious.”

“It is absolutely obvious that the Party of Regions has won. It is obvious to everyone. It will not be obvious only to a handful of voices. Some would very much wish that we lost but we won. We won in an absolutely fair fight,” Azarov said.

The Party of Region's closest competitor, Batkivshchnya (Fatherland), the party of jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, is in second place with about 22 per cent.

The Communist Party is currently in third place with around 15 per cent of the vote.

UDAR (Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform, or “Punch”), the party of world boxing champion Vitali Klitschko, and Svoboda (Freedom) are trailing with around 13 and 8 per cent.

At least one exit poll had earlier shown a closer contest between the parties of political rivals Yanukovych and Tymoshenko.

Litmus Test

Arseniy Yatsenyuk — the leader of the United Opposition alliance, which includes Tymoshenko's party — said on October 29 the exit polls proved the public supported the opposition, not the government.

“After the announcement of the exit poll it is absolutely clear that the Ukrainian people support the opposition and not the authorities. It is very important now that after the polls are closed the votes be counted, there should be no violations, there should be no falsifications,” Yatsenyuk said. “And the most important thing is not the party list, but also the vote count in every single-mandate constituency.”

Party of Regions officials claim their share of the vote will increase as individual races are tabulated.

Half of the seats up for grabs will come from party lists. The other half will come from individual contests.

Western officials say the elections to the 450-seat Verkhovna Rada are a “litmus test” for Ukraine's fragile democracy.

The elections were the first big electoral test in Ukraine since Orange Revolution icon Tymoshenko lost a close presidential vote to Yanukovych in early 2010.

Tymoshenko, who is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence for abuse of office, voted from her bed in a hospital where she is receiving medical treatment.

The vote was supervised by international monitors, including an 800-member team from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

The OSCE observer mission is due to hold a news conference on Monday at 14:30 local time.

Authorities from other monitoring groups gave early, positive assessments of the vote.

The head of the elections monitoring organization for the Commonwealth of Independent States said October 29 the elections were “valid” and “transparent.”

The head of the mission of the European Academy for Election Observation said no systematic voter violations were reported on election day.

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