Ukrainian Election Campaign was of Democratic Nature - British MP

KYIV, Ukraine, November 8, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

Though Ukrainian parliamentary elections on October 28 weren't perfect, their results indicated that the election campaign turned out to be of democratic nature, said the Member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom and the official observer from the UK John Whittingdale. He highlighted the fact that two new political parties made it to the parliament.

While Party of Regions, Batkivshchyna, and the Communist Party of Ukraine have previously taken the seats in the Ukrainian legislature, liberal UDAR and the far right Svoboda will join the Ukrainian parliament for the first time. The five listed parties crossed the election threshold of five percent. As of November 8^th, the Central Election Committee of Ukraine published the results from 99.98 percent of the voting stations, with Party of Regions getting 30 percent of the votes, oppositionist Batkivshchyna - 25.54, Udar - 13.96, Communist Party of Ukraine - 13.18, and Svoboda - 10.44 percent.

These results will influence the lineup of a half of the parliament (225 MPs), since the voters cast votes for both party lists and representatives in single-member constituencies (to comprise another 50 percent of the parliament). The first meeting of the parliament is scheduled for December 17^th.

John Whittingdale made his statement during the roundtable at the British Parliament Europe and Parliamentary Elections in Ukraine 2012, informs Ukrainian Embassy in the UK. Richard Spring, The Lord Risby, summed up the debate with a statement that Ukraine definitely had to become part of the European family, while the UK was ready to support Ukraine on its way.

28 countries and 35 international non-governmental organizations registered nearly 4,000 observers for the October 28 elections in Ukraine. More than 130,000 domestic observers worked at the parliamentary elections.

Acknowledging the detected violations during the election process, the monitoring mission from the European Parliament reckoned that the parliamentary elections in Ukraine were better than the ones in other post-Soviet countries that the EP has observed. At the same time, U.S. Department of State criticized the use of administrative resource to influence the results of the parliamentary elections in Ukraine, while praising peaceful voting procedure.