“We are the voice of eastern Ukraine, the industrial party of the country and of the real economy,” Yuiry Boyko told the Kyiv Post on Oct. 27. Boyko is number one on the Opposition Bloc list and a former vice-prime minister and energy minister under President Viktor Yanukovych.
In early opinion polls ahead of the election the Opposition Bloc was not expected to reach the 5 percent threshold required to enter parliament. As of 5:30 p.m. on Oct. 27 the party is expected to receive 9.91 percent with nearly 65 percent of the vote counted according to the Central Election Commission and to be the fourth largest party.
“It is an excellent result,” said Mykhaylo Dobkin former governor of Kharkiv Oblast and number three on the party list. “But we were expecting 20 percent.”
The result is likely to be a blow for many pro-reform Ukrainians. The Opposition Bloc has many politicians who were previously members of Yanukovych’s Party of the Regions and who voted for the so-called “dictatorial laws” passed during the height of protests last January to crack down on anti-government protests.
The Opposition Bloc denies simply being a repackaged version of the Party of the Regions but similarities continue including the centering of its electorate in eastern Ukraine and using Kyiv’s opulent Inter-Continental Hotel for their press center.
In the new parliament the Opposition Bloc will be a strong voice for eastern Ukraine. It finished first in five eastern Ukrainian oblasts. Support was strongest for the party in Donetsk Oblast where they received 37.8 percent of the party vote and nearly 34 percent in Luhansk Oblast and 32.8 percent Kharkiv Oblast.
Authorities of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics did not allow voting to take place in the territories they controlled but voting proceeded in areas of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts controlled by Ukrainian forces.
The results show a continuing preference for a party linked in ideology and personalities to the Party of the Regions in eastern Ukraine despite the recent bloody conflict in Donetsk and Luhansk.
The Ukrainian newspaper Ukrainska Pravda forecasts that they will receive 31 seats in the new parliament when party list and majority district results are finished being tallied.
Boyko said he expected the Opposition Bloc to eventually have 60 seats in parliament once independents running in majority districts join the Opposition Bloc faction.
Though the Opposition Bloc outperformed expectations it is still a shadow of the political force that the Party of the Regions once was.
“It just shows how much support in society for regions-types has collapsed as the former regions party had a solid 35-40% poll base in the past two parliamentary elections,” said Timothy Ash an analyst and head of emerging market research for Standard Bank in London.
