Updated 07:37 a.m. Moscow Time
KIEV, October 27 (RIA Novosti) - Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk's People's Front is maintaining a narrow lead in Ukraine's parliamentary elections gaining 21.66 percent of the votes with 20.15 percent of the ballots counted, the Central Election Commission (CEC) said Monday.
According to latest CEC data, Petro Poroshenko's Bloc is only 134 votes behind with 21.65 percent of the votes.
The Samopomich (Self-Help) party headed by mayor of Lviv Andriy Sadovy is now gaining 10.35 percent of the votes, followed by the Opposition Bloc with 9.61 percent, Oleh Lyashko's nationalist Radical Party with 7.71 percent and Yulia Tymoshenko's Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party with 5.96 percent of the votes.
Early parliamentary elections were held in Ukraine on Sunday. Ukrainians went to the polls to vote in 423 members of parliament - 225 of them from party lists and 198 in single-candidate constituencies. The electoral threshold has been set at five percent. According to the Ukrainian Civil Network Opora, the turnout in the elections to the Verkhovna Rada throughout Ukraine was 51.2 percent.
Arseniy Yatsenyuk's People's Front Party was founded in September 2014.
The party's platform is focused on the idea of Ukraine's integration into the European Union, in particular, the establishment of a visa-free travel regime between Ukraine and the European Union. In addition, the party calls for economic, fiscal, judicial, and prosecution reforms.
The Petro Poroshenko Bloc is a liberal-conservative party, previously known as Solidarity party, which was set up by the current President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, in 2001.
In August 2014, Solidarity was renamed to Petro Poroshenko Bloc, and Yuriy Lutsenko, the former Minister of Internal Affairs, was unanimously elected its head.
The party's current election program is called "Strategy 2020" and aims to implement 60 reforms and special programs that will make Ukraine eligible to apply for EU membership within six years. Poroshenko hopes that by 2020 Ukraine will have entered the top 20 Global Competitiveness and Business ranking.
