KIEV, Oct. 16 – Ukraine’s largest opposition party, Batkivshchyna, on Wednesday nominated four candidates to run for seats in Parliament at special elections due on December 15.

It also backed a candidate from the nationalist Svoboda party to run for a fifth seat.

The elections in five majority districts throughout Ukraine come after the Central Election Commission cancelled previous votes on October 28, 2012, arguing it was impossible to choose winners.

Opposition candidates are believed to have won the elections last year, but heavy manipulation by pro-government candidate, and even involvement of law enforcement agencies in some districts, had seriously complicated the contest.

The special elections will be a test of whether three Ukrainian opposition parties can successfully join forces in supporting single candidates in order to defeat pro-government ones.

It is especially important as the upcoming elections will be the last electoral battle between opposition and pro-government candidates before the next presidential vote due in March 2015.

The opposition parties, Batkivshchyna, Svoboda and Udar, pledged to nominate a single candidate in order to defeat incumbent President Viktor Yanukovych.

Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister and the leader of Batkivshchyna, who was jailed to seven years in October 2011, in a letter from prison, called on the opposition parties to support the single candidates.

“I hope this is my last address from a distance,” Tymoshenko said in an apparent reference to ongoing negotiations between European leaders and the Ukrainian authorities on her release for medical treatment in Germany.

Viktor Romaniuk was nominated to run in the district No. 94 in the Kiev region, Arkadiy Kornatskiy in the district No. 132 in the Mykolayiv region, Mykola Bulatetskiy in the district No. 194 and Leonid Datsenko in the district No. 197, both in the Cherkasy region.

“We all remember how thugs with guns destroyed Kornatskiy’s farming business, how corrupt courts fabricated cases against Bulatestskiy and how Romaniuk was forced to flee from Ukraine saving his life from bandits in the government,” Tymoshenko said.

Batkivshchyna also supported Yuriy Levchenko, a candidate from the Svoboda party, in the district No. 223 in Kiev. The candidate must be officially nominated by Svoboda.

Holding the special elections this year was one of the demands from the European Union for Ukraine to sign political association and free trade agreements on November 28-29.

The developments come amid worsening public support for Yanukovych and his Regions Party that may signal major political problems for both.

A recent opinion poll showed that Yanukovych was likely to lose by a good margin runoff election to two main opposition candidates, underscoring his rapidly declining popularity.

Perhaps reflecting fears of being associated with the ruling party, the Regions Party said it will not officially nominate candidates for the special elections.

Pro-government candidates are expected to quietly nominate themselves and to run as independents, analysts said.

All candidates must be nominated before November 4 to be registered by the Central Election Commission for the elections. (tl/ez)