Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s party took a commanding lead in Sunday’s snap parliamentary election, handing the novice politician a broader mandate for driving change and tackling corruption in the war-scarred nation, APA reports quoting Reuters.
A comedian with no prior policymaking experience, Zelenskiy gained fame playing a schoolteacher who becomes president in a TV comedy. He won a landslide victory in a presidential vote in April, running as an outsider who would tackle corruption and raise living standards in one of Europe’s poorest countries.
The 41-year-old has had to deal with a cabinet and lawmakers who are mostly loyal to his predecessor Petro Poroshenko, prompting him to announce on the day of his inauguration a snap election to win a mandate in parliament.
Exit polls showed his Servant of the People party far ahead of its nearest challenger, although possibly short of a majority. The Russian-friendly Opposition Platform was placed in a distant second place, followed by Poroshenko’s party and that of a former prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko.
The Voice party, fronted by another newcomer to politics, rock star Sviatoslav Vakarchuk, was fifth.
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