MARIUPOL, Ukraine -- There were many angry shouts heard in eastern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol on Election Day.
“My outrage has no limits,” lamented a 64-year-old Lydmyla Lenshyna after she couldn’t vote at her polling stationon Oct. 25 as there were no voting ballots. “It’s the first time when the elections are disrupted in Mariupol.”
The election officials at the polling station located at school No 9 were trying to placate the tempers,despite they also felt embarrassed. They didn’t receive the voting ballots on the day before because the Mariupol Election Commission found some grave mistakes in them and so refused to accept them.
Mariupol, the city of almost 500,000 residents in Donetsk Oblast, located just miles from a war zone, has become a scene of the fierce stand-off between the candidates for the post of mayor.
The main rivals are Vadym Boychenko, one of the top managers at the local Illich steel mill, owned by oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, and Yury Ternavsky, who owns a local milk factory.
Despite both candidates run as independent, Opposition Bloc, a political party formed from the former allies of the ousted President Viktor Yanukovych, supports Boychenko, while the post-Maidan parties endorse Ternavsky and other alternative candidates.
The first scandal erupted whenthe Mariupol Election Commission took a decision earlier this month to order printing of voting ballots at the Akhmetov-owned printing house Pryazovsky Robochy, which led to suspicions that the ballots might be falsified.
When the election officials arrived at the printing house on the eve of polling day, they found that some of the ballots were lying on the floor, and the name of one mayoral candidate,a long-standing current mayor Yury Khotlubey, was indicated twice there. They also found some violations in packing the ballots and sealing of the printing house.
So the majority of the commission, 11 out of 16 members, refused to accept the ballots and stayed at the printing house overnight to protect them from distribution to the polling stations.
Tempers were high inside of the printing house in the morning, where the tired election officials andcandidates were clashing at times with journalists and among themselves. Some of them wore camouflage.
“We don’t mind if Opposition Bloc wins. But let it be the fair elections,” Kateryna Chernyuk, the member of Mariupol Election Commission from President Petro Poroshenko party, told the Kyiv Post.
Chernyuk was charging her cellphone after the night spent at a printing house. She showed the Kyiv Post a text message from Iryna Yurina, head of Mariupol Election Commission, with demands to hand the ballots over to the polling stations, threatening thecommission’s members with criminal charges otherwise.
Yurina, who represents the New Country party, formed from the former members of now banned Communist Party,called her colleagues’ behavior a “sabotage.”
“Those ballots that were prepared to be taken to the polling stations were normally packed and they were not defective,” she said.
Up to 100 supporters of post-Maidan parties gathered near the printing house to make sure the ballotswon’t be taken away. People were listening to the patriotic songs by popular Ukrainian rock bands and preparing to stay for long.
Meanwhile, the candidates were exchanging accusations of disruption the vote.
Ternavsky shared the pictures of ballots with errors on his Facebook page, accusing the Opposition Bloc of disruption the vote.
“Opposition Bloc with Akhmetov atop of it wants to take a revenge in Mariupol,” said a candidate for mayor Igor Reshetnyk, also present at the printing house. “There is a lot put on a map for Metinvest (Akhmetov’s company) here,” he said, adding that by his information the company spent some $7 million for the campaign in Mariupol.
Boychenko, a candidate of Metinvest, claimed he spent for his campaign no more than $35,000, paying for all out of his own pocket.
Speaking with the Kyiv Post at his office at Illich plant he said the forged ballots were secretly brought to the printing house by the representatives of post-Maidan parties. “Three videocameras were filming the printing process day and night,” he said.
Vadym Boychenko, a top manager of Mariupol Illich steel mill, owned by billionaire Rinat Akhmetov, is viewed as one of the favorites in local mayor’s elections.
Boychenko dismissed the accusation of his critics that Metinvest company campaigned and pressured his workers to vote for him. “I’ve never met with the workers over the period of my campaign, I swear,” he said. There are some 40,000 people working at Akhmetov’s plants in Mariupol.
The residents, who arrived at the polling stations, split in putting the blames for disrupted elections. In Mariupol, a former stronghold of pro-Yanukovych’s forces, there is strong support for both the Opposition Bloc and post-Maidan candidates.
Lenshyna, who came to vote together with her several also senior friends, said it was probably done by the Opposition Bloc.
But Yulia Sheykina, who came to the polling station together with two small kids, accused both the Central Election Commission and the post-Maidan parties of disrupting the elections.“These parties behaved the way it was comfortable for them,” she said.
Mykhailo Okhendovsky, head of the Central Election Commission, who was appointed to this post by Yanukovych’sparty ticket, demanded the election officials in Mariupol to hold the elections anyway, threatening them with up to 7 years in jail otherwise.
But the officials of Mariupol Election Commission claimed they were not going to hand over the “falsified ballots” to the polling stations. “Okhendovsky isn’t the final authority,”Chernyuk said. “How can we accept the rigged elections?”
President Poroshenko called on the parliament to hold an extraordinary meeting and decide the new date of elections in Mariupol.
Boychenko, the candidate, said he would win the elections anyway. “I don’t see any other options.”
All the residents polled by the Kyiv Post said they were ready to come to the elections on the other day, no matter when they would be assigned.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at [email protected]
