Ukraine Local Elections Marred by Voting Violations

Poroshenko’s fragile ruling coalition faces a major survival test Sunday in tense local elections that exclude the pro-Russian separatist east.

The decision not to hand over ballot papers to polling stations was “absolutely groundless”, Central Electoral Commission Chief Mykhaylo Okhendovsky was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

Four exit polls from Ukraine’s local elections indicate the governing coalition has retained its dominant position in the west and center of the country despite widespread disappointment with the government of President Petro Poroshenko.

At press time, election officials in the capital Kiev said that initial reports indicate that there was overall low voter turnout.

Since April 2014, eastern Ukraine has witnessed deadly clashes between pro-Russia forces and the Kiev government forces backed by the West. In March that year, Ukraine’s eastern peninsula of Crimea voted in a referendum to rejoin the Russian Federation, triggering the conflict.

The results will be released by November 20.

Ukraine’s divisive local elections were mired in controversy Sunday after elections in the port city of Mariupol were canceled following irregularities in the vote.

Ballots still may be cast on Sunday in Mariupol, and the Donetsk region town of Krasnoarmiysk where elections also didn’t start, but with “big delay”, Okhendovsky said.

Voters were choosing more than 10,700 local councils as well as mayors.

But polls show populist forces of various stripes have gained in recent months.

Surveys showed that the president’s ruling party was ahead of other parties in polls. “That is the reason why our organization is asking the Central Elections Commission, the Verkhovna Rada to come up with a mechanism of solutions for centralized printing of ballots with a protection system”, Koshel said.

The ballots were printed at the printing house belonging to Ukraine’s billionaire oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, whose candidate runs for mayor as part of the Opposition Bloc (former “Party of Regions” – Ukraine’s ex-president Viktor Yanukovich’s party).

The leader of the Batkivshchyna Party, Yulia Tymoshenko, votes at a polling station in Dnipropetrovsk. Poroshenko’s confident promise to stamp out the insurgency within a matter of days announced on the day after his presidential triumph has clearly failed, resulting in frustration and animosity among the electorate. “We are not allowed to make choice, to vote against those nationalists”, said said, meaning pro-European political parties, which are in power now.