Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy yesterday appeared likely to become his nation’s first leader since the fall of communism whose party has a parliamentary majority.
Under Ukraine’s mixed election system, Zelenskiy’s Servant of the People party won by a landslide in both party list voting and in constituencies, preliminary election commission data showed following Sunday’s snap election, allowing it to control most of parliament’s 450 seats.
“Zelenskiy’s party will have a majority in the parliament and it is very likely that it will be a vast majority. That’s a total surprise that they won so many in constituencies,” said Volodymyr Fesenko, an analyst at the Penta think tank.
Photo: Reuters
It would be the first time since Ukraine won independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 that most members of parliament belong to one political party.
Zelenskiy, who played a fictional schoolteacher-turned-president in a popular TV series, has tapped into widespread voter anger over corruption and low living standards in one of Europe’s poorest nations.
Zelenskiy supporters welcomed the results, saying they showed voters’ high expectations of their new leader, who swept to power in a presidential election in April.
“There should be changes in our country. I am 49 years old and judging from my experience, I know we had no other way but to make such a choice. Otherwise, we would not be able to get rid of the past,” said Olena Moskalenko, a finance specialist from Kiev.
“I think we are probably lucky. I have one hope only — that we won’t get disappointed in our choice again and in our expectations,” she said.
A senior official in Zelenskiy’s party, Oleksandr Kornienko, said that Servant of the People was in the lead in about 125 to 127 out of 199 individual constituencies, which are picked on a first-past-the-post basis.
It also won a majority on party lists with more than 42 percent of votes cast, the preliminary results showed, which would give the party an additional 121 to 122 seats, Kornienko said.
The Russian-friendly Opposition Platform was in a distant second place, followed by former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko’s party and that of former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, preliminary data showed.
Another new pro-Western party, Voice, fronted by rock star Sviatoslav Vakarchuk, also passed the 5 percent threshold to enter parliament. Voice is the only party to which Zelenskiy has offered coalition talks.
Ukrainian markets welcomed the prospect of a period of political stability, with the nation’s US dollar-denominated sovereign bonds rising to their highest since early last year.
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