Chamber:
	Verkhovna Rada
Dates of elections / renewal (from/to):
	31 March 2002
Purpose of elections:
	Elections were held for all the seats in Parliament on the normal expiry of the members' term of office.
Background and outcome of elections:
	In total, 33 parties and blocs and some 7000 candidates were registered by the Central Election Commission (CEC) to compete in the 31 March 2002 elections. The electoral campaign focused on opposition to, or support for, President Leonid Kuchma, who is constitutionally prevented from running in the next presidential elections, due in 2004. Another key issue was alleged Western interference, with both the Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU) and the pro-presidential For a United Ukraine bloc (ZYU) condemning what they saw as US-led support for Our Ukraine. The campaign was marred by violence, including physical assaults on campaign workers and candidates. International observers received reports about opposition candidates having problems ensuring protection of their premises, vandalism in party offices, as well as harassment of candidates by the authorities. The head of a monitoring mission of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) said that the 2002 campaign was more democratic than during the 1999 presidential election, adding that candidates had more freedom this time to air their views and challenge violations in courts. In all, the Central Election Commission (CEC) registered 944 international observers to monitor the elections. The international observers did not report major incidents on election day. However, most of them noted that there were far too many voters per polling station. This often led to long queues and chaos, where voters had to wait hours to enter the voting booth or voted outside the voting booth. After the polling day, the International Election Observation Mission (IEOM) -- formed by the OSCE, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, and the European Parliament -- declared that the elections indicated progress over the 1998 parliamentary ballot toward meeting international commitments and standards but also included major flaws. For their part, some 200 CIS observers declared the parliamentary elections "free, transparent, democratic, and legitimate." The elections resulted in victory for the opposition to President Kuchma, with this victory split equally between the centre-right Our Ukraine bloc of former Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko and the Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU). Under the proportional vote system, in which 225 seats were contested, Our Ukraine obtained 23.52 per cent of the vote (70 seats), as against 20.04 per cent (59 seats) for the Communist Party, 11.98 per cent (36 seats) for For a United Ukraine, 7.21 per cent (21 seats) for the Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc, 6.93 per cent (21 seats) for the Socialist Party and 6.24 per cent (18 seats) for the Social Democratic Party-United. The newly elected Parliament opened its first session on 14 May. Nevertheless, the political groups failed to agree on the election of a new Speaker until 28 May, when Mr Volodymyr Lytvyn, from the pro-presidential United Ukraine, was elected to this post.

STATISTICS

Round no 1 (31 March 2002): Elections results
Number of registered electors	37 277 697
Voters	25 884 236 (69 %)
Blank or invalid ballot papers	1 635 226
Valid votes	24 249 010

Round no 1: Distribution of seats
Political Group	Total	Proportional	Majority
For a United Ukraine	102	36	66
Our Ukraine	112	70	42
Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU)	66	59	7
Socialist Party of Ukraine (SPU)	24	21	3
United Social-Democratic Party of Ukraine SDPU(o)	23	19	4
Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc	21	21	0
Democratic Bloc	4	0	4
Yednist (Unity)	3	0	3
Independents	95	0	95

Distribution of seats according to sex:
Men:	426
Women:	24
Percent of women:	5.33