(VOVworld) – Ukraine’s Central Election Committee announced the preliminary results of elections for the leaders of 40 local councils on Monday. The Opposition Bloc said it won in 17 regions including a landslide victory in the southeastern provinces.
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| Members of a local election commission open a ballot box to count votes after a day of election at a polling station in Kiev, Ukraine, Sunday, Oct. 25, 2015. (AP Photo/Sergei Chuzavkov) |
It requested a recount of votes in 4 districts in Kiev due to some irregularities. Inter-parties of the Hungarians in Zakarpattia obtained more than 50% of the votes in two districts bordering Hungary.
In Mariupol, a major port and steel city on the Sea of Azov, voting was scrapped because of tensions over the influence of Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine's richest man whose industrial holdings are key to the city's economy.
The local election commission refused to accept ballots printed by a company owned by Akhmetov, who supports the Opposition Bloc. President Petro Poroshenko said the election in Mariupol was unacceptable and asked the Parliament to revise the law to reorganize an election there.