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168 lawmakers elected from one-seat communities officially take seats in Verkhovna Rada

These include former speaker of the Verkhovna Rada Vladimir Litvin and former CEO of Ukraine’s energy company Naftogaz Yevgeny Bakulin

© ITAR-TASS/Maxim Nikitin

KIEV, November 9. /TASS/. Ukraine’s Central Election Commission (CEC) has officially announced eight more lawmakers elected to the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) from one-seat constituencies, Ukrinform news agency said on Sunday.

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These eight include former speaker of the Verkhovna Rada Vladimir Litvin, who ran for a parliament seat as a self-nominee, and former CEO of Ukraine’s energy company Naftogaz Yevgeny Bakulin, who was nominated by the Opposition Bloc.

Thus, as of November 9, as many as 168 lawmakers elected from one-seat communities have taken their seats in the parliament.

As many as 27 seats in the Ukrainian parliament will be vacant, since only 198 lawmakers will be elected in one-seat constituencies, instead of 225 as was at the previous parliamentary polls in 2012. Elections were not held in 15 constituencies in the southeastern Lugansk and Donetsk regions, in two constituencies in the city of Sevastopol and ten - in Crimea.

Earlier on Sunday, head of the Central Election Commission Mikhail Okhendovsky said that the Central Election Commission would not be able to announce results of parliamentary elections in all one-seat constituencies by November 10. “Today, we can say it for sure that tomorrow we will not be able to announce results in all one-seat constituencies,” he said.

Okhendovsky said that it was problematic to announce election results, first of all, in two constituencies - in the town of Berdichev (Zhutomir region) and in the town of Novomoskovsk (Dnepropetrovsk region), where courts had ruled to recount votes.

Although voting results are to be announced on November 10, the balance of forces in the new parliament is clear already now: the Pyotr Poroshenko Bloc is expected to have 132 seats, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s People’s Front is to have 82 seats, the Samopomoshch /Self-assistance/ party - 33 seats, the Opposition Bloc - 29 seats, Oleg Lyashko’s Radical Party 22 seats, and Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchina /Fatherland/ - 19 seats.

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