Parliamentary Election Campaign 2006: Day 1

By Ukrainian law, yesterday was the first day of the Parliamentary Election Campaign 2006. For the first time in Ukraine, the party-list proportional system will be used to determine how the 450 seats are distributed.

A few items of note:
1. From what I can tell, there will be a 3% barrier for a party to get any seats in teh VR. A party must achieve 3% of the popular vote to be part of the proportional distribution.
2. Yulia held a meeting of her "block" behind closed doors. What happened outside the closed doors was covered by UA Pravda.
3. Mykola Tomenko walked from PRP (Party of Reform and Poriadok - Pynzenyk) to go onto the BYT (Block Yuli Tymoshenko) deputy list where he says he will be fifth. He was one of the big figures in the OR, and another personal favorite of mine because his background is academic (history) not business. The PRP has not yet decided to become part of BYT, although unofficially it is widely believed they will do so.
4. Anatoliy Matvienko's (another one on my A-list) Sobor Party is split. Yesterday he signed a coalition agreement with Yushchenko's Nasha Ukraina. But Sobor is also shown as a part of BYT.

I wonder if there is a website out there that has a party list with block affiliations updated in real-time? Add some odds and we could have a new betting site.