The Moscow Times has a brief, yet interesting, summary of the potential outcome of Sunday's Ukrainian Presidential election. It glosses over the shift on power and the balances that will remain, in the short term at least. It does make a strong point in its closing paragraph ... whoever wins will likely change Ukraine’s constitution, which as currently constructed virtually guarantees perpetual conflicts between the president and prime minister. Experts generally agree that a presidential system is worse than a parliamentary one, but they also agree that a mixed presidential-parliamentary system such as Ukraine’s is by far the worst. The best option would be for Ukraine to adopt a full parliamentary model in line with other European States. The question is who will undertake this challenge and sacrifice presidential power and authority for the sake of the nation. The answer to this question is the person who should be elected president
Based on analysis of the first round presidential vote held on January 17. Yulia Tymoshenko was the highest polling candidate in 15 Oblasts/regions including Kyiv Metro region with 4.8 Million votes Viktor Yanukovych was the highest polling candidate in 11 Oblasts/regions including Svestopol with a total of 6.8 million votes. Oblasts and regions are not equal in size or the number of constituents. The smallest region has less then 500,000 voters and the largest over 3 million. Under Yushchenko's proposed Senate Tymoshenko (not including the additional senator representing Ukrainians abroad and the ex-offico ex-presidents' seats for life) would have elected 45 Senators (3 senators per region) and Yanukovych who had 1.4 times Tymoshenko's vote would have elected only 33 Senators. The remaining 12 million (over 50%) constituents would have been unrepresented.
Two interesting outcomes in the final round vote that have not been widely discussed in the English media is the outcome in Zakarpattia and Ternopil. We are not sure if it has been been discussed in the Ukrainian media 1. Viktor Yanukovych was the highest polling candidate in Zakarpattiia previsoully Our Ukraine/Yushchenko were the highest. (See 2004,2006 and 2007 election results ) District 74 місто Берегове (Beregove - a Hungarian community located near the border) 2. The other interesting observation is that Yanukovych actually went backwards between the first round and the second round in Ternopiil. In the first round Yanukovych received 6354 (0.26% of the national vote) in the second final round, with less number of candidates, Yanukovych recorded only 5370 (0.21% of the national vote) Why Yanukovych went backwards in the second round is any ones guess but we think this would make interesting reading.
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