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Poroshenko’s party fails to keep majority in Kiev legislature

The Petro Poroshenko Bloc has won 52 seats in the 120-seat Kiev legislature

Petro Poroshenko Nikolay Lazarenko/TASS

Petro Poroshenko

© Nikolay Lazarenko/TASS

KIEV, November 2. /TASS/. Ukraine’s pro-presidential party, the Petro Poroshenko Bloc Solidarity, has failed to keep the majority in the legislative body of the Ukrainian capital city Kiev, the Kiev Council.

The Petro Poroshenko Bloc has won 52 seats in the 120-seat Kiev legislature, the city election commission said on Monday after counting 100% of protocol of the October 25 local elections. "Five parties have surpassed the five-percent barrier," the commission’s chairman, Anatoly Suldin said.

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Apart from Solidarity, the Kiev new legislature will have the party Samopomich (Self-assistance) led by Mayor of Lviv Andriy Sadovy (22 seats), Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) (17 seats), the party Unity led by Kiev’s former mayor Alexander Omelchenko (15 seats), and the nationalist party Svoboda (Freedom) with 14 seats.

The UDAR-Solidarity faction in the current Kiev City Council controls 69 seats. Unity has ten seats, the Radical Party of Oleh Lyashko has seven seats, Svoboda - six seats, Samopomich - five seats, Civil Position - three seats, Batkivshchyna - two seats, Democratic Alliance - two seats, New Life - one seat. Fifteen lawmakers are affiliated with neither of the factions.

Earlier, first deputy leader of Petro Poroshenko Bloc’s faction in the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) Igor Kononenko said his political force hoped to win at least 50 seats in the Kiev City Council.

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