Ukrainians deliver warning to Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk in local elections

The mayors of 358 cities and the heads of about 10,000 small towns and villages will be elected through the direct vote.

MARIUPOL, Ukraine (AP) – Ukrainians voted Sunday in local elections seen as a test of strength for President Petro Poroshenko’s government and for the oligarchs accustomed to running their own regions, but a last-minute dispute blocked the ballot in a key port city.

A survey conducted by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation earlier in October said that a few 40 percent of the voters were undecided on which party they should support in the election.

A huge turnout for Poroshenko would allow him to consolidate power to amend the constitution and give more power to local governments.

Voting in the southeastern Ukraine city hadn’t started more than nine hours after polling stations opened in other parts of the nation because officials didn’t have paper ballots, Yegor Steshenko, deputy chief of the local electoral commission, said in a telephone interview.

Over 1,500 global observers will watch the local elections in Ukraine.

The elections’ vote count will be finished by November 4 and the results should be published within 5 days.

United Nations figures show about 8,000 people have so far died in the conflict.

These will be the sixth local elections held in Ukraine since its independence in 1991.

The rebel-held territory in the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk will not participate in the electoral process since they postponed elections to 2016.

Mariupol voters have previously backed candidates of the Party of Regions, which was close to Ukraine’s ex-president Viktor Yanukovych, who fled the country after protests in Kiev in 2013-2014.