Moscow’s man sweeps to Chechen election victory

THE Kremlin’s candidate Akhmad Kadyrov won a landslide victory in Chechnya’s presidential election but few voters believed he would bring a rapid end to the fighting that has devastated their republic.

Kadyrov won 81.1% of the vote cast in Sunday’s poll on a turnout of 83.46%, the head of the republic’s electoral commission Abdul-Kerim Arsakhanov said yesterday after 77% of the ballots had been counted.

He said the vote had been “absolutely free: no pressure was put on people to vote one way or the other.”

Russian authorities, which have presented the election as evidence the situation in the republic has returned to normal, are likely to view the result as confirmation of its policies in Chechnya. President Vladimir Putin, quoted by the RIA Novosti news agency, told a government meeting the result “testifies that people in Chechnya hope for positive changes in life” and called for “work with Chechnya’s leaders and public to divide powers between the republic and the federal centre.”

However critics, including Russian opposition politicians and rights groups, have dismissed the election as a farce, denouncing the strong institutional bias in Kadyrov’s favour and the withdrawal or disqualification of his main rivals.

After the vote, Kadyrov reaffirmed his refusal to hold talks with separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov, elected president of Chechnya in January 1997, and predicted that rebel supporters would “switch sides in two or three weeks or a month”.

He said his first priority would be “ensuring the safety of Chechnya’s citizens and eliminating the terrorists,” the standard term used to designate Chechen rebels.

Russian media were divided in their assessment of the poll, some critical and others welcoming the election of a new Chechen authority. Nezavisimaya Gazeta and the business daily Kommersant both stressed the lack of genuine opposition to Kadyrov, while the liberal Gazeta pointed to comparisons with Soviet-era elections “with their turnouts of 99.998%.” But Izvestia said “even if the new authority is imperfect, it will still be legitimate.”

The official turnout figure appeared barely credible to journalists who had visited several polling stations and observed few voters. Echoing widespread disillusionment, Ibragim, a Grozny resident in his late 50s, said he had not bothered to vote.

“It makes no difference who wins. I don’t believe things will get better. They could even get worse. Kadyrov will just look after his own,” he said.

Another, Tamara, in her 40s, said she had decided to vote for Kadyrov at the last minute despite his failure to improve things in the past in the faint hope he might prove her wrong.

Moscow-based independent analyst Vladimir Primylovsky believed such hopes were certain to be dashed.

“This was a dishonest election that gives Kadyrov almost no legitimacy. At best it will allow the situation to stagnate, but there’s every chance it will make things worse,” he said.

The pan-European rights body OSCE refused to send observers to the poll, and the rapporteur for Chechnya of the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly, Andreas Gross, said he could not send observers to what was “not a real election.”

Russia’s 30,000 troops permanently stationed in the republic were allowed to vote, but Chechnya’s last diaspora, including more than 50,000 Chechens living in Moscow, were barred unless they were prepared to make the long and hazardous journey home.

The election, which took place amid a high security presence, came almost exactly four years after 80,000 Russian troops poured into the Caucasus republic in what Moscow called a lightning-strike “anti-terror operation” to crush a separatist insurgency but which has since degenerated into a grinding guerrilla war.