Ukrainian parliamentary election - 26 October 2014

[Famous Mortimer]

President Petro Poroshenko has called new elections for the 26th of October, 2014. This after the coalition government of Fatherland, UDAR, and Freedom collapsed.

Here is the most recent poll:

Radical Party of Ukraine: 22.2% (!?!?!?!??!?!)
Fatherland: 17.4
UDAR: 11.5
Civil Position: 11.5
Solidarity: 11.1
Freedom: 6.9
Strong Ukraine: 5.2
Communist Party of Ukraine: 3.9
Samopomich (Self Reliance): 3.3
Party of Regions: 2.7

That poll is very much an outlier though. All previous polls since the revolution have had either Fatherland or Poroshenko's Solidarity Party in the lead.

The rise of the people's party is somewhat surprising. Prior to the revolution they were mostly known for their leader and only MP Oleh Lyashko being a self hating closeted gay. He somehow managed to come in 3rd in the presidential election though. I'm guessing he's positioned himself as some sort of Ukrainian nationalist/anti-Russian candidate. All the most recent news stories about him are about him punching pro-Russian people.

[Famous Mortimer]

A law banning the Communist Party and the Party of Regions was put forward but never passed.

Also, the person who put it forward...Oleh Lyashko.

[Famous Mortimer]

Apparently several former Communist and Region MPs now sit in a group called For Peace and Stability. I'm unsure exactly why they changed.

[Famous Mortimer]

Former President Oleksandr Turchynov and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk have left Fatherland.

Yatsenyuk may form his own party and Turchynov may or may not take part. It's also possible that both will join the Poroshenko Bloc/Solidarity.

Yatsenyuk isn't that surprising since he led his own party previously. Turchynov is unexpected though since he's always been close to Yulia Tymoshenko.

The rump Fatherland, if it even keeps existing, is basically just Tymoshenko fetishists at this point. There predicament is made even worse by the fact that Tymoshenko has completely dropped off the public radar.

[Famous Mortimer]

UDAR and the Poroshenko Bloc will run as one.

[Famous Mortimer]

Poroshenko passed a law giving temporary autonomy to the East.

Fatherland opposed, so that might give them some room to maintain a reason for existence.

Also, Crimea had elections for the local parliament. United Russia won a super majority. LDPR was the only other party to get in.

[Famous Mortimer]

Party of Regions is boycotting and I assume the Communists are as well.

Also worth noting, even as she speaks out against the peace deal, Putin is still making vaguely pro-Tymoshenko comments. Recently saying that her imprisonment was unjust and that it hurt Ukrainian-Russian relations.

[Famous Mortimer]

Although the Party of Regions aren't taking part, a new group called the Opposition Bloc, which takes basically the exact same positions, will be on the ballot.

The Opposition Bloc is led by Yuriy Boiko, a Regions MP who ran for president as an independent and got less than 1% of the vote.

Importantly, it also includes Regions presidential candidate Mykhailo Dobkin and is financial backed by oligarch Rinat Akhmetov.

Other notable members include Jewish oligarch Vadym Rabinovych, who won 2% in the presidential elections, and Natalia Korolevska, leader of the left-wing Ukraine Forward party.

Serhiy Tihipko was originally supposed to be the leader of this group but he opted to run on his own because he thought they were too tainted by corruption.

[Famous Mortimer]

Now that this is less than a week away, the parties are clearer:

Petro Poroshenko Bloc: Lacks much ideology beyond support for the president. In keeping with that sole principle, they strongly supported the very aggressive war against the East one day, and then supported the ill thought out ceasefire the next. The Bloc is led by former Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko. Lutsenko is actually a pretty good guy. He was originally a member of the Socialist Party of Ukraine but broke with them when they supported Yanyukovych for Prime Minister. He was then a member of Our Ukraine and Fatherland before becoming a political prisoner during Yanyukovych's presidency. Other good people in the Bloc include Afghan-Ukrainian journalist Mustafa Nayem and Maidan doctor Olha Bohomolets (who won just under 2% of the vote running for president). The Bloc also includes new Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko's neo-liberal UDAR party, as well as a bunch of former Party of Regions MPs. Let's not forget that Poroshenko himself has ties to both the pro-Western camp and the pro-Russian camp.

People's Front: New party led by incumbent interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and former acting President Oleksandr Turchynov, both of whom left Yulia Tymoshenko's Fatherland party. The People's Front considered joining the Poroshenko Bloc and although they didn't, it's not clear what divides them. It could be argued that the People's Front is somewhat more hawkish, since it opposed the ceasefire, although it opposed it much less fiercely than other parties. It might also be argued that the People's Front is more conservative. Yatsenyuk's previously led the explicitly conservative Front for Change party and he has no links to social democracy, unlike Poroshenko and Lutsenko. Probably the main difference though is personal ambition and the fact that most of the People's Front politicians were too tainted/bland to get high up on Poroshenko's list.

Fatherland: The party of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and not many others at this point. It was hit hard by defections to other parties after the revolution. To be fair, a lot of those defectors never really cared for Tymoshenko in the first place and had only joined for the sake of forming a united opposition. A few of them, like Oleksandr Turchynov, actually were close personal allies though. What's left is only Tymoshenko's hardcore supporters. Like with the above parties, their platform doesn't include much in the way of ideology. They seem to be trying to position themselves as the sane, respectable face of Ukrainian nationalism. The number one candidate on their list isn't actually Tymoshenko, it's Ukrainian air force pilot Nadiya Savchenko, who was captured by rebels and is current imprisoned in Russia.

Radical Party: The more extreme and less respectable face of Ukrainian nationalism. Led by sole MP Oleh Lyashko. Lyashko was previously known for getting kicked out of the Tymoshenko Bloc for corruption (quite a feat) and probably being a closeted homosexual. Since the revolution though, he has repositioned himself as an ultra-nationalist. He was the one who proposed the ban of the Party of Regions and the Communist Party. He has engaged in fistfights with pro-Russian politicians. He took part in the storming of a rebel held government office in the East. He also wants to make Ukrainian the sole official language. For a while the party was rising in the polls based on this platform. They seem to have stalled with the ceasefire though, as other more respectable politicians took up the anti-Russia cause.

[Famous Mortimer]

Everyone in Popular Front is a career politician is who hated by the public. I think them doing so well is probably voters trying to send the message that they like Poroshenko (since the Popular Front has always said they would coalition with the PPB) but they oppose the ceasefire.

[Famous Mortimer]

Where's Strong Ukraine? Did they join the Opposition Bloc at the last minute?

[Famous Mortimer]

Where's Strong Ukraine? Did they join the Opposition Bloc at the last minute?

At 3%. Just below the Agrarian Union, around where Hrytsenko is. Wasted vote.

I'm guessing the Agrarian Union is Volodymyr Lytvyn's new outfit. Can anyone confirm that?

[Famous Mortimer]

The number two for Samopomich has the nom de guerre Semen Semenchenko. Please tell me that translates to something better in Ukrainian.

[Famous Mortimer]

Any news on Yarosh's constituency?

[Famous Mortimer]

These results seem pretty stable. I seem to recall there wasn't much change in the presidential election either, from the time counting started to the time it ended.

[Famous Mortimer]

Anyone know why Yarosh is running as an independent if Right Sector is on the ballot?

[Famous Mortimer]

No. I found him on the electoral commission website. He's listed as self nominated even while his party is listed in the list results.

[Famous Mortimer]

I wonder what the worst record for gender imbalance in modern times, in free elections and in the cultural West (or thereabout) is.

Out of 200 constituency seats, women are currently leading in 4, and one of these may not hold. From what I know of Ukraine, the vast majority of women are in the workforce, they are near parity in the free professions and most, if not all, people would not have a problem voting for a female candidate.  Odd that the results are so lopsided.

FEMEN is from Ukraine. I always thought that was kind of weird. Maybe there's an undercurrent of sexism we don't know about.

[Famous Mortimer]

43% counted now.

Results are pretty much exactly the same.

[Famous Mortimer]

Parties backing a peace process to end the conflict with pro-Russian rebels in east Ukraine won a clear victory at Sunday's parliamentary polls, Russia's deputy foreign minister said Monday."It is already clear that parties which support a peaceful resolution of the internal Ukrainian crisis received a majority," Grigory Karasin was quoted as saying by state-run Ria Novosti news agency.

I wonder if Moscow is secretly hoping that Svoboda party crosses the 5% despite what they say in public.  That way they can still use it as a bogeyman to justify their policies.

The Poroshenko Bloc and the Opposition Bloc are the only parties that support the ceasefire. They won around a third of the vote put together. I don't see how that's a clear victory.

and yes, I think you're very right about Svoboda. Although I'm sure Moscow will continue to call Kiev "Fascist" regardless.

[Famous Mortimer]

No until counting is done. They're 54% done rn.

[Famous Mortimer]

Oh God. Svoboda is increasing every time.

[Famous Mortimer]

So the agrarian party that's doing pretty okay is linked to former president Yushchenko. Remember him?

I wonder about this womens party that's doing okay. Didn't Kuchma's wife led a womens party? Is this the same one?

[Famous Mortimer]

Popular Front isn't that tough.

[Famous Mortimer]

Lots of wasted votes. Third largest party is people who didn't get in.