Voters were choosing more than 10,700 local councils as well as mayors. The previous elections were presidential and parliamentary polls held in 2014. One political party was listed twice, while another was left off the ballots, said Natalia Kashchiy, a member of Mariupol electoral commission.
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“Mariupol residents, mostly retirees, who want to cast their votes come to the polling stations”.
Voting was also scrapped in the last minute in Mariupol, a major port and steel city, where tensions have been brewing over the influence of Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man whose industrial holdings are key to Mariupol’s economy.
A law adopted on July 14 stipulated that local elections shall not be held in the territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, the city of Sevastopol and a few districts in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which are not controlled by Kiev.
Voters in Ukraine are taking part in local elections that are mainly considered as a test of support for the Western-backed President Petro Poroshenko. They say:” There are no ballots available yet, ” a report notes.
Poroshenko urged the parliament to conduct vote in Mariupol by 2015 year end and said he had ordered a thorough investigation of the matter, as he said “fraud was being prepared” in Mariupol.
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In a separate statement, his party blamed the ballot issues in Mariupol on the Opposition Party, which includes many former supporters and allies of ousted pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovich. A September poll by the global Republican Institute showed that two thirds of the population was frustrated by the pace of reform and more than half disapproved of the government.
