Election time

You might not know this, if you don't live in Ukraine, but tomorrow is election day. For months we have been looking at billboards for different parties---5 or 6 seem to have most of the advertising money, there are about 30 parties on the ballot, I think. Here's a sample:

seems more than half the billboards are political messages

Not for politics!

The Party of Regions have a lot of different billboards

 I took most of these back in August while driving back from Crimea

These ads seem to show "what we've done" for you

We have seen some campaigning done here in the village, the communist party people walked through the village shaking hands and talking to the pensioners (they want to lower the age for getting old age benefits on their platform) a couple weeks ago. 

opps the shutter stuck!

 the communist party advertising on the highway to Dnepro, right where every slows down for the police check

Happy family ad

We have gotten advertising in the mailbox, including this one from boxer (heavyweight world champion) Klitchko's party--I am told the party name means Punch and the slogan is something like We'll fight for you! We even saw a convoy of cars led by a van with a loudspeaker for that party driving through Dnepropetroesk yesterday, Garry was wondering with all the traffic jams in the city if that was well thought out, there were a couple snags as we drove through downtown, mostly caused by double parking and cars getting stuck in the intersection so the cross traffic doesn't move, and the fender benders where the cars stay in place and traffic tries to get around them, until the police arrive.

The end of the Nikolopolia day as we got back last week

Last week the party of regions (the president's party) drove around the village early Saturday on Nikolipolia Day saying they were providing free meat and vodka at the celebration. We missed it, since we were driving Yana home that day. They also have signs in the store, where one clerk is wearing one of their hats, and the story is all the town employees have been told they must vote for them if they want to keep their jobs.




Hopefully all goes well when the ballots are marked tomorrow, our church is meeting elsewhere because our normal rented auditorium is a voting place, cameras have been installed there to monitor the election.