Ukrainians poised for decisive parliamentary elections on Sunday

Ukrainians are recharging their batteries to choose a new parliament in a tightly-contested weekend parliamentary elections. Twenty-two political parties and blocs are contesting the parliamentary election. The main contenders are incumbent Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich's Party of the Regions, the United Opposition bloc built around the jailed former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko's Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party, the liberal party UDAR (Punch) led by heavyweight boxing champion Vitaly Klitschko, the nationalist party Svoboda (Freedom) and the Communist party. Of the 450 seats in the single-chamber parliament, 225 will be filled through voting by party lists, in which the voter casts a ballot for a party which presents a list of candidates. The other half will be filled through voting for individual candidates in electoral districts. In the party-list voting, a party needs to win at least 5 percent of the vote to gain representation in parliament. In the individual races, the candidate with the most votes, and no less than 30 percent of total votes, wins a seat. The Regions are expected to retain majority in the single-chamber parliament, according to polls, although results of individual races are hard to predict. Polls open at 8 a.m. (0600 GMT) and close at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT) at 33,769 polling stations across the country. There are 36.3 million eligible voters. The election will be monitored by about 3,800 international observers and some 240,000 local observers. The election campaign finished at Friday midnight and the electoral silence started. According to Ukrainian electoral law, any form of election propaganda is prohibited two days before the elections. On Saturday night all of the propaganda materials are to be removed in all settlements of the country. A poll conducted by an independent pollster published Friday by the Ukrainska Pravda Internet newspaper showed President Viktor Yanukovych's Party of Regions ahead of the opposition Yulia Tymoshenko's alliance 26 to 21 percent. The opposition aptly-named UDAR (Punch) Party was in strong third with 18 percent while the Communists trailed in fourth with 10 percent. The nationalist Svoboda (Freedom) was the only other party to sneak past the five-percent minimum threshold with 5.6 percent of the vote. The pollster's name was not revealed as the publication of such polls is not allowed inside Ukraine in the run-up to the vote.