Ukraine president’s party set for election win

Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovich’s party is on course to secure a parliamentary majority after an election, but will face an opposition boosted by resurgent nationalists and a liberal party led by boxing champion Vitaly Klitschko.

Exit polls and first results from Sunday’s vote showed Yanukovich’s Party of the Regions would, with help from long-time allies, win more than half the seats in the 450-member assembly after boosting public sector wages and welfare handouts to win over disillusioned voters in its traditional power bases.

“It is clear the Party of the Regions has won,” Prime Minister Mykola Azarov told reporters. “These elections signal confidence in the president’s policies.”

Victory for the pro-business Regions party, which represents the interests of the wealthy industrialists bankrolling it, will underpin the leadership of the president, who comes up for re-election in the former Soviet republic in 2015.

His rule since taking power in February 2010 has been marked by an accumulation of presidential powers and tension with the West over the imprisonment of his rival, opposition leader and former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

Balloting is in two parts, with half the seats allotted to individual candidates winning local district polls and half to parties according to their share of the vote nationally.