Two pro-European parties in Ukraine that ran on a platform to enact tough reforms shared the lead after a parliamentary election, according to partial results released yesterday.
With more than half the votes counted, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s Popular Front was leading with 21.6 percent of the vote, while Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s party had captured 21.5 percent.
Poroshenko said after Sunday’s election that he wanted Western-oriented parties to quickly form a broad reformist coalition.
Interfax-Ukraine cited Yuriy Lutsenko, a leading figure in the Poroshenko bloc, as saying the draft coalition agreement would be published later yesterday.
A pro-European party based in western Ukraine called Samopomich was running third with about 11 percent of the vote.
Sunday’s vote overhauls a parliament once dominated by loyalists of former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, who sparked months of protests that caused his ouster in February with a decision to deepen ties with Russia instead of the EU.
Anti-Russian sentiment has spiked in Ukraine as the country battles separatists in the east who many believe are supported by Moscow. The war has left more than 3,600 dead.
Nonetheless, the opposition bloc, which pundits believe largely drew its support from Yanukovych’s once-ruling Party of Regions, put in a strong showing with about a 10th of the vote.
While about 36 million people were registered to vote on Sunday, no voting was held on the Crimean Peninsula, which was annexed by Russia in March, or in parts of Ukraine’s easternmost regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, where shelling remains a daily constant.
Anton Karpinsky, a 36-year-old doctor in Kiev, said he was delighted that Ukraine would now have a pro-Western government.
“Our revolution and fight was not in vain,” Karpinsky said. “The election shows that Ukraine sees it future in Europe and NATO, and we will get there step by step.”
Poroshenko has laid out an ambitious agenda envisioning significant changes to Ukraine’s justice system, police, tax system, defense sector and healthcare to be completed by 2020. Among the tougher decisions ahead will be allowing the costs of basic utilities in the cash-strapped country to float in line with market demand.
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