Ukrainians will vote to elect new parliament on Sunday

The election campaign kicked off on July 30. Representatives of 21 political parties will run for seats in the national parliament. The political heavyweights include the ruling Party of Regions, the united opposition party Batkivshchina and the Communist Party of Ukraine. This time they will be joined by two newcomers such as the UDAR party headed by boxer Vitaly Klichko and "Ukraine Forward!" founded by Natalya Korolevskaya, the former associate of Yulia Timoshenko, Kazinform refers to Itar-Tass.

More than 5,200 candidates will contest for 450 seats in parliament, i.e. about 12 candidates per one mandate. However, the number of candidates in some one-seat constituencies is reaching 40.

The political parties are to overcome a five-percent threshold to get seats in parliament. Candidates in single-mandate constituencies will have to gain a simple majority of votes.

The polling stations will be open from 8:00 to 20:00 local time (10:00-22:00 Moscow time). Ukraine switched over to winter time the night before the vote. It means that Ukrainian time is lagging behind the Moscow time by two hours.

Ukraine has been enthusiastic to borrow the latest Russian election trend. More than 32,000 (out of 33,769) polling stations were equipped with web-cameras in a record short period of 30 days. The project cost the Ukrainian budget an impressive sum of about 123.3 million dollars. A huge 'video panel', the largest in Ukraine, has been installed at the country's situation analysis and response center set up ahead of the October 28 parliamentary elections. It is made up of 42 smaller screens each of which will be able to show pictures from any polling station on the day of voting.

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