KIEV, November 1 (RIA Novosti) — Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk's People's Front party and President Petro Poroshenko's bloc are running neck-and-neck in the parliamentary elections, with 22.15 percent and 21.82 percent after 99.88 percent of ballots have been counted for party lists, the Central Election Commission (CEC) said Saturday.
A snap parliamentary election was held in Ukraine on Sunday. Ukrainians went to the polls to vote for 423 members of parliament — 225 of them from party lists and 198 in single-candidate constituencies. Election protocols are still coming in, despite the CEC chief Mikhail Ohendovsky earlier comments that voting results by party lists would be announced on Wednesday or Thursday.
According to CEC, only 163 of the 198 protocols have been submitted by local election commissions across Ukraine, with returns from three Donetsk and Luhansk commissions still waiting to be entered in the electronic vote counting system. Under the Ukrainian election law, the Commission is to announce the final voting results by November 10.
The campaign agenda of the People's Front party is focused on the idea of Ukraine's integration into the European Union. In the run-up to the elections, the party also called for economic, fiscal, judicial, and prosecution reforms.
The two leading parties are in coalition talks to form a unity government.
Other parties with a presence in Ukraine's Parliament, known as the Verkhovna Rada, include the Samopomich (Self-Help) party with 10.97 percent of ballots by party lists, the Opposition Bloc with 9.41 percent, and the Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party headed by former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, which has 5.68 percent, with the rest of contenders failing to clear the 5-percent threshold.
