KIEV — It was meant to be a local election campaign like no other, a scrubbed-up democratic exercise following two years of death and sacrifice. Yet Sunday’s vote in Ukraine was a depressing return to type.
There was vote rigging, criminality, dodgy candidates, violence, widespread voter apathy and buckwheat handouts, and one set of elections even had to be canceled after it was “discovered” late in the day that the printers used for producing ballot papers belonged to the oligarch bankrolling one of the candidates.
But as the exit polls trickled in, the president’s party could claim a modest win. It was …read more
Source: European Voice
