Business New Europe: Poroshenko could squeeze tiny Yatsenyuk lead with constituency seats

(Business New Europe – bne.eu – October 28, 2014) With 80% of votes counted, People’s Front party headed by Ukraine’s prime minster, Arseny Yatsenyuk, has held its hair-breadth lead over President Petro Poroshenko’s eponymous party. People’s Front is on 21.94% of the vote, while Petro Poroshenko Bloc is on 21.6%, according to the Ukrainian Central Election Commission.

But with half of the 450 seats in parliament distributed under first-past-the-post constituencies, analysts expect Poroshenko’s party to get a larger final number of deputies in parliament, since he has more pull in central and eastern constituencies.

Moreover, roughly 100 of the 225 constituency MPs are likely to be independent MPs without party affiliation, say experts, which will increase horse trading as the leading pro-European parties come together to hammer out a coalition.

Poroshenko has said he wants as broad a coalition as possible, to attain a constitutional majority needed to amend the constitution. One of the main planks in Poroshenko’s reform project is to radically decentralize power to the regions, a second is to abolish parliamentary immunity, often used by criminals entering parliament to hide from the law. Both will require constitutional reform.

Poroshenko has said all parties entering parliament could join the coalition, with the exception of the Opposition Bloc headed by former energy minister Yury Boiko, comprising many allies of ousted former president Viktor Yanuokovych, and with roots in eastern Ukraine. But Poroshenko said that the government would not be formed by party quotas, but by selecting the most suitable candidates.

According to the Central Election Committee, Opposition Bloc is in fourth place with 9.53%, with 80% counted. Lviv mayor Andriy Sadoviy’s party Samopomich is in third place with 11.06% of the vote, populist Oleh Lyashko’s Radical Party is on 7.42% and former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivschyna party is on 5.68%. Tymoshenko later said she would support the pro-European coalition. The nationalist party Svoboda have failed to enter parliament by party lists, as have the Communist Party and former defence minister Oleksiy Gritsenko’s Civic Position party.

The final appearance of the government is still anybody’s guess. It is complicated by the fact that the two leading parties of President Poroshenko and Prime Minister Yatsenyuk respectively were both formed only weeks before the elections, and that a huge fluctuation in MPs is now expected.

Moreover, the current government was largely formed under Yatsenyuk in late February 2014, immediately following the ouster of former president Viktor Yanukovych, based on the majority in parliament at the time of Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshyna party, of which Yatsenyuk was second in command, before leaving with allies to set up his own party in early September to contest elections.