KIEV, Ukraine, March 31 (UPI) -- Voters in ex-Soviet Ukraine went to the polls Sunday to elect their representatives in the national assembly, Verkhovnaya Rada, Russia's state-controlled ORT television network reported.
At 8 a.m. Sunday local time, more than 33,000 polling stations opened nationwide as voters cast their ballots to pick a new lineup in the 450-seat parliament.
Thirty-three political parties and blocs nominated their candidates as the average ratio of nominees seeking election totaled 15 contenders per one seat.
Half the seats will be distributed among the parties surpassing the required 4-percent margin of all votes cast, while the remaining 225 seats will be won by nominees running in single-mandate districts.
More than 1,000 international observers are monitoring the vote, including 312 monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Monitors from the United States, Russia and Poland are biggest in numbers among international observers watching the ballot.
According to Ukraine's election chief Mikhail Ryabets, there haven't been any serious violations of the election law thus far.
Three hourse before the polls' closing, nearly 40 percent of all registered voters went to the polls, Ryabets said.
Highest turnout figures have been recorded in the Zhitomir, Khmelnitsky and Vinnitsa regions -- between 35 and 45 percent -- while the capital Kiev posted a lowest turnout barely exceeding 20 percent.
The ballot has been declared valid as Ukraine's election law doesn't require a specific turnout margin to validate the vote.
The polls will close at 8 p.m. Sunday with official results to be announced by the Central Election Commission Monday morning.
As he cast his vote in central Kiev Sunday morning, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma told reporters that the ballot was a "rehearsal of the (upcoming) presidential election."
Kuchma has been elected president twice already and firmly denies allegations that he will orchestrate constitutional changes allowing him to run for a third term in office.
"Ukraine's future greatly depends on today's ballot," Kuchma said.
"We will either continue going round in circles or we will move forward. If the current balance of power (in the chamber) remains unchanged, we will stagnate."
Kuchma added that he hoped "common sense will win" in the ballot and admitted that he had cast his vote in favor of the "For a United Ukraine" bloc, headed by his chief of staff Vladimir Litvin.
In his address to the voters Friday, Litvin promised to lower the current inflation rate, raise the population's incomes, cut taxes and boost machinery, tool-making, textile and food industries.
The pro-presidential alliance, however, has trailed in the polls held in recent weeks behind the "Our Ukraine" opposition bloc, chaired by former Prime Minister Viktor Yuschenko, the Social-Democratic party and Ukraine's communists.
Liberal-minded Yuschenko was the chief architect of Ukraine's economic reform in recent years, but his dismissal last April only added to his paramount popularity.
However, Yuschenko also received a fair share of criticism after including into his alliance Ukrainian ultra-nationalists from the Rukh movement.
Political analysts argue that, in a broader sense, Sunday's ballot will indicate Ukraine's readiness to either pursue a pro-Western policy or to forge stronger ties with its big Slav neighbor and ally, Russia.
Besides "Our Ukraine," Western-minded parties also include the "Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko," headed by a former deputy prime minister who promised her supporters last year to bring about Kuchma's ouster after winning the parliamentary election.
Tymoshenko is Kuchma's bitterest opponent whom she blames for pulling the strings behind the prosecutors' decision to jail her last year for alleged involvement in a money-laundering scandal.
On the other pole of the political spectrum are the advocates of rapprochement with Moscow -- Ukraine's communists, the Social-Democratic party, the Socialist party of Ukraine, Natalya Vitrenko's bloc and the Russian bloc.
Along with the general election, the authorities in Ukraine's autonomous Crimean province held a vote Sunday to elect legislators to the provincial assembly.
The ballot was marred by the scandal involving incumbent parliament chairman Leonid Grach whose nomination was removed from the list after a court ruled on Feb. 25 that he had violated election rules.
The court in Simferopol said Grach had entered incorrect data in his income declaration to the election commission and had remained on the job in the parliament during the election campaign.
Grach's appeal to the ruling at a provincial court was rejected prompting the lawmaker to seek justice at Ukraine's Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court hasn't yet ruled on the appeal and Grach said Sunday that the results of the ballot would be considered illegitimate as long as his appeal remained without a ruling.
Grach has been serving on the Crimean parliament for 16 consecutive years.
