MARIUPOL, Ukraine -- Despite cold rain and warnings of possible terror attacks, residents of the sea port city Mariupol in Donetsk Oblast rushed to polling stations on Nov. 29 to elect a new mayor and deputies of the city council.
It was the city’s second try at electing local authorities after the local election commission blocked the first vote on Oct. 25, refusing to distribute the voting ballots to polling stations allegedly over suspected fraud.
Fears of violations or vote disruptions were widespread during in the industrial city of almost 500,000 residents. Armed men in camouflage from the Right Sector volunteer battalion patrolled the polling stations along with the police.
The Ukrainian military found four mines and explosives on the outskirts of Mariupol on the eve of the Election Day. Vyacheslav Abroskin, Donetsk Oblast’s chief of police, earlier reported that Russian-backed separatists from the occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk were plotting terrorist attacks in the city.
Despite these fears, Mykhailo Okhendovsky, head of the Central Election Commission, said the vote in Mariupol was held “almost ideally” and the turnout “exceeded expectations.” As of 6 p.m. the turnout in Mariupol reached almost 35 percent, according to election officials.
“We have even fewer violations today than in previous stages of the election campaign,” said Serhiy Tkachenko, head of the Donetsk branch of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine election watchdog.
At polling stations, the voters said they were hoping the ongoing vote would bring peace and prosperity to the city, where some 40,000 residents work for the Metinvest steel company, owned by Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov.
Out of a dozen of voters polled by the Kyiv Post, the majority said they cast their ballots for Vadym Boychenko, the top HR manager at Akhmetov’s Illich steel mill. There were a total of 22 candidates for mayor registered for the race.
“Boychenko is our guy, he works at the Illich plant,” said Liudmyla Kovtun, 67, a nurse at a local maternity hospital. “Plants are the most important for us here, as well as peace”
“I voted for Boychenko because he is young and he’s from Metinvest. We need jobs. My husband is a Metinvest employee,” said Oksana Pugachova, 40, a boiler operator.
Boychenko arrived at his polling station smiling and said he expected to gain over 50 percent of votes, which would allow him to win in the first round. If elected, he promises to tackle corruption, create new jobs and transform Mariupol from a frontline city into a tourist center.
The war is still felt in Mariupol, where banners in the downtown area show portraits of local residents killed in fights with Russian troops and Russian-backed insurgents in the summer of 2014. Volunteers who helped the Ukrainian army throughout the conflict also participated in the campaign as candidates from various parties.
Ivan Mezyntsev, a 82-year-old pensioner, said he voted for Yury Ternavsky, the owner of a local milk factory, as he believed 38-year-old Boychenko was too young for the mayoral post. Mezyntsev also complained that he wasn’t able to find the party he was planning to support for the city council due to an overly complicated voting ballot. “So I just ticked the first party on the list,” he said.
Several senior voters also said they were confused by the voting system.
Independent candidate Ternavsky, the No 2 in the mayoral race according to most sociological polls, was supported by several pro-Maidan parties, including President Petro Poroshenko Bloc. On his Facebook page, Ternavsky accused the Opposition Bloc of bringing voters by bus to the polling stations.
But Tkachenko, the election observer, said the law doesn’t ban candidates from organizing such transfers for voters as long as they avoid agitation. Tkachenko also lamented numerous cases of placards and billboards for candidates and parties present in the city on polling day. “This is a violation of the communal services, who failed to remove them on time,” he said.
One more pro-Maidan candidate, Maksym Borodin, was nominated by the People’s Force party, which positions itself as a “party of the middle class.” An environmentalist, Borodin became known in Mariupol thanks to organizing a rally of thousands of people in protest against air pollution in 2012. After that, Akhmetov’s plants had to install special exhausture filters in the city.
“I voted for Borodin because he does all he can for Mariupol and he does it for free,” said Anastasia Bondarenko, 23, a business woman.
Olena Zolotariova, a professor at a local university and a candidate for the city council from People’s Force, said if the party passes the 5-percent threshold its representatives will demand a transparent electronic procurement system in the city to stop embezzling of the city budget.
“The yearly budget of Mariupol reaches Hr 2.5 billion (over $104 million) but the city looks like a scrapyard,” Zolotariova said.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at [email protected]
