MARIUPOL, Ukraine (AP) – Four exit polls from Ukraine’s local elections released Monday indicated the governing coalition would retain its dominant position in the west and center of the country despite widespread disappointment with the government of President Petro Poroshenko.
Advertisement
The commission’s members who refused to accept the ballots were people from Ukraine’s patriotic parties (pro-Maidan parties) who spent the night at Priazovsky Rabochy printing house to avoid distribution of ballots to the polling stations.
The vote was marred by the failure of polls to open in the strategic southeastern port of Mariupol.
The southeastern city of 500,000 came under repeated attacks and one major takeover effort by the militias in the bloodiest days of the 18-month war.
Regional elections in the Ukrainian cities of Mariupol and Krasnoarmiysk were called off on Sunday (October 26) for alleged irregularities on the ballot papers. The vote is now set to take place in November instead.
But politicians were even more urgently concerned about what happens in Mariupol – a vital outlet for the east’s industrial output that provides a potential land bridge between separatist regions and Ukraine’s Russian-annexed Crimea peninsula.
Rinat Akhmetov, a billionaire and former Yanukovych ally, is the city’s main employer.
But with household energy prices on the rise along with inflation topping 50 percent, many around the country are asking what happened to the reforms promised two years ago in the aftermath of the Euromaidan revolution. The OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) has said the elections held in Ukraine conform to global standards in spite of pressure from big business and mass purchase of election advertising space in printed media and air time on TV and radio, head of the ODIHR mission Tana de Zulueta told a news conference.
The elections are not held in the areas in Donetsk and Lugansk regions, controlled by independence-seeking insurgents, and the government-supervised territories near the frontline of the recent fighting.
Advertisement
Support for prime minister Arseny Yatseniuk’s party dropped to around 1 percent compared to 20 percent past year.
