Chechens go to the polls

Chechnya is holding the latest in a series of elections today as part of a continuing effort to bring stability and peace.

More than 350 candidates are running for 58 seats in the two-chamber regional legislature.

Threats of violence loomed over the vote, but polls opened without any serious incidents, the local branch of Russia’s Interior Ministry said, according to the RIA Novosti and ITAR-Tass news agency.

Some 24,000 federal and regional troops and police were deployed to protect the region’s 430 polling stations. In the past week, there have been near-daily reports of gunbattles with militants and of secret explosives and arms caches uncovered.

Despite continuing corruption, squalor, crime, Islamic extremism and persistent skirmishes with rebel hold outs, Kremlin officials have repeatedly insisted that the oil-rich, Muslim region is on the road to recovery and stability.

As evidence, they point to the three public votes – two presidential, one referendum – the republic has held since March 2003, exercises that were all criticised as flawed at best, rigged at worst.

Authorities have staged a rock concert, opened a water amusement park and promoted Grozny’s professional soccer team. Boxer Mike Tyson opened a boxing tournament in September.

The Chechen capital, Grozny, is awash with billboards promoting candidates and littered with campaign leaflets on walls, fences and buildings. Local radio and television stations are filled with campaign spots.

“The fact that we are holding these elections for parliament is proof of stability in the republic,” President Alu Alkhanov was quoted as saying by ITAR-Tass news agency.

Observers and analysts, however, say the vote is the latest attempt by the Kremlin to make the situation look brighter than it is.

“Russia is trying to create the picture that in Chechnya everything is fine,” Yulia Latynina, a commentator who has written extensively on the region, said on Ekho Moskvy radio.

The pitched battles that left Grozny a wasteland and sent thousands of Chechens fleeing into neighbouring regions are no more. But a low-level conflict persists with regular skirmishing between Russian troops and their allied Chechen forces against rebel fighters, some with ties to Islamic extremist groups.

Water and electricity are sporadic and unemployment is widespread – officially 60% of the region’s more than one million residents are without work. Further destabilising, however, is the spate of abductions staged by criminal groups, paramilitaries and, according to rights groups, Russian troops. Nearly 1,700 people have been kidnapped and are still missing, government officials say.

Alkhanov was elected in August 2004 to replace the assassinated Akhmad Kadyrov, who was killed in a bomb blast seven months after his own election. Neither election – nor the March 2003 constitutional referendum that cemented Chechnya’s status as part of Russia – was considered free or fair.

Many observers suspect the parliament will be nothing more than a rubber-stamp legislature for the region’s real ruler – Akhmad Kadyrov’s son Ramzan.

He heads a widely feared security force that is accused of abuses ranging from kidnappings to robberies, and holds vast business interests in Chechnya’s oil industry. His profile is higher than Alkhanov and he is widely expected to become president sometime after turning 30 next year.