You're reading: Pro-presidential member of Parliament says local elections disrupted in Mariupol

None of the district polling stations opened in the city of Mariupol, Donetsk region, on October 25, the day when Ukraine is holding its local elections, Petro Poroshenko Bloc faction MP Yehor Firsov has said.

‘It is 8:00 a.m. in Mariupol. Not a single district (election) commission has begun working – the elections have been derailed completely,’ Firsov wrote on his Facebook account on Sunday morning.

‘We must not leave it like that! This farce must entail strict criminal liability for those guilty! I want to stress that there must be a concrete trial and a concrete (prison) sentence, not political (liability)!’ the Ukrainian parliamentarian said.

It was reported earlier that Mariupol’s election commission had refused to accept ballot papers printed at the printing office of the Priazovsky Rabochy newspaper after torn and incorrect ballot papers had been found.

The Petro Poroshenko Bloc party has proposed rescheduling the elections in Mariupol.

‘The (parliamentary) faction of our political force is initiating legislative amendments that would make it possible to hold voting in Mariupol simultaneously with the second round of the elections of city mayors on November 15, or within another very short period of time,’ the party said in a statement posted on its website.

The ballot papers are still at the printing office, where electoral observers have also arrived.

According to media reports, nine members of the territorial election commission stayed at the printing shop overnight. They intend to hand the damaged documents over to law enforcement agencies.

The election commission’s chairperson, for her part, insisted on accepting these ballot papers.

The press service of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry’s branch for Donetsk region reported on Sunday that on Saturday, October 24, police in Mariupol had been alerted about electoral law violations on 20 occasions, including ten such reports arriving from the printing shop itself.

‘There is still an acute issue concerning information about an opened package with ballot papers and illegal election campaign products,’ the press service said.

Law enforcement agencies also note that one representative of this political force had twice worked with police investigators and had even complained that the investigators had not confiscated material evidence from the scene.

All facts have been documented and an inquiry continues.

As for reports concerning illegal election campaign products, seven such facts were registered as of 8:00 a.m. on October 25.

For their part, observers from the ‘OPORA’ civil network have said that in Mariupol all 720,000 ballot papers have remained under guard on the premises of the printing office since last night.

‘CEC (Central Election Commission) has sent a telegram to Mariupol’s city territorial election commission demanding that it distribute the ballot papers among district election commissions and go ahead with the elections. However, the territorial election commission has not held its session,’ ‘OPORA’ said in a report.

The local online publication ‘0629’, for its part, reports that city residents, mostly pensioners, are currently coming to polling stations in Mariupol, but they are unable to vote due to the absence of ballot papers.

According to ‘0629’, all polling stations opened in Mariupol at 8:00 a.m., ballot boxes and voting cabins are ready, and all polling station employees are at their workplaces, but there are no ballot papers.