Poroshenko Bloc dominates local elections amid reports of violations

Ukraine held elections on Oct. 29 for council members and heads at 201 newly created united territorial communities. The Solidarity Poroshenko Bloc had the best results with 60 of its candidates becoming council heads, compared to 13 from the Fatherland party that came in second, as reported by the Western-sponsored Committee of Voters of Ukraine. The Poroshenko Bloc claimed victories for 111 of its candidates for council heads, and 110 out of its 458 candidates for councils.  The party performed well in all regions of Ukraine, according to its estimates.

In her turn, Fatherland Party Head Yulia Tymoshenko claimed victory in the elections and alleged the results in the Poroshenko Bloc’s favor reflect election fraud, vote-buying and abuse of government resources by the Presidential Administration. She claimed her party members won 880 seats, or 31% of those available. She also claimed strong results in all regions of the country.
The National Police opened 10 criminal cases related to the elections, four of which were for vote-buying. Seven armed men were arrested for assaults on election commission members in the Dnipropetrovsk region. Incidents of election fraud were confirmed by the Western-sponsored Opora election monitoring group.

Zenon Zawada: These elections are a solid preview of what to expect in the 2019 parliamentary vote. The Solidarity Poroshenko Bloc will perform the strongest, with the leading challenge coming from the Fatherland party. We can expect that challengers to the president’s party will complain about election fraud, a lot of which will be legitimate but won’t draw much protest from a public that is exhausted by politics.
The Poroshenko administration is sure to use these results to further discredit the tent city protest outside parliament that reached its second week yesterday. This morning, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov decided to replace the police securing the protest site with National Guardsmen. We still see even chances for a violent clash.

The election results will also convince the People’s Front party, led by former Prime Minister Yatsenyuk, to merge with the Poroshenko Bloc, making it even stronger to compete in the 2019 elections.