Major opposition parties unite for Rada election

Ukraine’s major opposition parties announced an alliance yesterday ahead of the October 28 election for the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament. The pact was signed by Yulia Tymoshenko (the jailed former prime minister) and Arseniy Yatseniuk, the leaders of the country’s two most popular opposition parties. The October election will be Ukraine’s first since a new election law was approved last year and returns to a dual-mandate voting system where 225 seats in the 450 seat Rada will be elected by party lists with the remaining elected by simple-majority constituencies. According to yesterday’s agreement, the opposition parties will run on a single party list and agree on a list of candidates to support in each constituency.

Brad Wells: An alliance between the pro-democracy opposition forces has been widely anticipated, but after years of failing to agree to almost any major joint initiatives – this is a positive development. Virtually all opinion polls indicate the combined opposition parties can gain a majority of the seats elected by party lists, but their key test is in the constituencies, which are slanted in the Party of Region’s favor, as it draws its support from the most densely populated regions of the country in the east. Running a single list of candidates for the constituencies boosts the opposition’s chances by consolidating the opposition/protest votes behind one candidate.