Comment by Sergei Markedonov
Special to Russia Profile - November 5, 2009
The Upcoming Abkhaz Presidential Elections Will Test the Republic’s Newly Found Independence
Abkhazia has started preparing
for the main political event of 2009 – the presidential elections.
November 2 was the deadline to nominate candidates for the main
governmental post of this partially-recognized republic. The upcoming
elections are the fourth following the Georgian-Abkhazian armed
conflict of the early 1990s, and each of the previous campaigns
corresponded to particular stages in the internal evolution of the
republic’s de-facto statehood. But this time, there is one fundamental
difference.
The “magnificent five” of the
candidates is made up of Sergey Bagapsh, Raul Hadzhimba, Beslan Butba,
Valery Bganba and Zaur Ardzinba. Sergey Bagapsh is the sitting
president of the republic, nominated by the ruling United Abkhazia
party. Raul Hadzhimba currently holds the reputation of the “chief
oppositionist” (he was the representative of the Abkhaz opposition whom
the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin met during his August trip to
Sukhumi). At the same time, this candidate has extensive experience
with being in power. At different times in the past, Hadzhimba served
as the vice president, the prime minister of the republic, and five
years ago he posed as the successor to the first Abkhazian leader
Vladislav Ardzinba, but failed to get appointed to the highest post.
Today, Hadzhimba is trying to have a rematch with the 2004 campaign
winner Sergei Bagapsh.
Beslan Butba is the leader of the
oppositionist Abkhazian Economic Development Party. He has experience
working as a deputy (he was a deputy in Abkhazia’s previous parliament,
but lost his seat in the 2007 elections), and is considered to be one
of the richest people in the republic. He is presently criticizing the
government’s socio-economic policy, offering his own view on how to
“set up Abkhazia” (as part of his campaign strategy, he presented his
own five-year program for the republic’s socio-economic development).
Yakub Lakoba, a participant of the 2004 election campaign and the
leader of the People’s Party, the oldest in the republic, also supports
Butba’s candidacy.
It is difficult to say anything
definite about Valery Bganba, besides the fact that he is a doctor of
philosophy and economics who is “temporarily unemployed.” Zaur Ardzinba
is the irreplaceable director of the state-owned Abkhazian Sea Shipping
Company.
Candidates have until November 12 to
register, after which they can start campaigning. The official list of
candidates is displayed for everyone to see ten days before the
election (it is scheduled for December 12). The people’s will must be
announced within three days of the election (that is, before December
15).
The first presidential elections held
here in 1994 marked a transition from the traditional model of the
national and autonomous formations during the Soviet times to a
presidential republic. Back then, Abkhazia’s leader was chosen by the
deputies of the republic’s Supreme Soviet. In 1999, the elections were
held nationwide for the first time, but they were non-alternative: the
only candidate was the charismatic leader of the Abkhaz nationalist
movement, Vladislav Ardzinba. But his grave illness that followed
predetermined the outcome of the struggle for his political heritage.
The period of the republic’s first president’s supreme and undivided
reign spurred a powerful tendency toward the softening of the personal
power regime and liberalization in Abkhazia.
The 2004 elections were marked by tough
competition. Five years ago, Abkhazia’s current President Sergei
Bagapsh systematically spoke out against authoritarian rule. In 2009,
his critics claim that the “stagnant character” of his rule is their
main bone to pick with him. That is to say, the republic’s second
president has done nothing to drastically change the situation in
Abkhazia, leaving things just as they were when he took over.
It seems that there is a great dose of
truth in the critics’ words, especially since the Abkhaz leader
certainly doesn’t like to make sudden moves and has no proclivity for
revolutionary transformations of reality. However, one big, obvious
advantage can be said to have come out of the Bagapsh presidency, and
this is a very rare achievement for the whole of the former Soviet
Union. Having come to power, Bagapsh did not take to destroying the
opposition and establishing his legitimacy by rejecting his
predecessor. There is still an opposition media in the republic, while
seven of the 35 deputies in parliament are members of the opposition
(during the parliamentary elections of 2007, nearly half of the 35
single-seat constituencies held second rounds). Thus revenge (which
would have been understandable from a human point of view, considering
how much nasty rhetoric was directed at the oppositionist candidate
Sergey Bagapsh in 2004), did not become the driving force of the second
Abkhazian president’s political behavior. The fact that it is not just
the opposition that is contesting this year’s elections, but the main
opponent of the 2004 campaign Raul Hadzhimba, speaks in Bagapsh’s
favor. At the same time, it should be noted that Hadzhimba today
largely repeats Bagapsh’s calls and slogans of five years ago,
criticizing the authorities for being distanced from society and the
needs of the ordinary people.
Meanwhile, the upcoming presidential
elections in Abkhazia are actually drastically different from all of
the previous campaigns. They are noteworthy because they will be the
first since the process of acknowledging the republic’s independence
began. It will be a test of the partially-acknowledged state’s
maturity. The voting in December will only be open to Abkhazian
passport holders. Batal Kobakhiya, the head of the deputies’ commission
on preparing suggestions to correct the republic’s electoral
legislation, believes that this will prevent mass rigging. But from
Russia’s point of view, an Abkhazian passport is not just a procedural
instrument and insurance against forgery, it is an identifying factor
(Abkhazian citizenship as the foundation for building the state). Such
legislative novelty as the requirement for all presidential candidates
to open a checking account with financial organizations that are
registered on the republic’s territory (and not in the neighboring
Krasnodar region of the Russian Federation) should also be viewed in
this “identification” context.
Because all of the candidates to the
presidential post are Russia sympathizers, their differences relate to
the quality of the Abkhaz statesmanship and independence. Having been
recognized by Russia in August of last year, Abkhazia reached a very
important milestone. Dealing with Georgian calls for “reinstating
territorial integrity” are no longer a relevant political task for the
Abkhaz elites. Now their main goal is to endow independence with
positive content and a higher quality. After all, it was not to replace
one patron with another that a battle with the “small empire” was waged
in the 1990s.
Thus Moscow ought to grasp what looks
to be a very simple truth at first glance: the farther Abkhazia gets
from Tbilisi, the more questions and critical remarks will be addressed
to the present-day sponsor of Abkhazia’s self-determination – the
Russian Federation. This poses a very important question for Russian
politics: did Russia learn a lesson from the campaign of five years
ago, when unilateral support for the approved successor on behalf of
the Kremlin provoked what looked like unfounded Russian-Abkhaz
disputes? In August of this year, Vladimir Putin broke the Kremlin’s
long-term, unspoken tradition on the post-Soviet space—he met with
representatives of the Abkhaz opposition. This is possibly a sign of
new trends and a change in Russia’s approach to formulating policy in
the “near abroad.” In any case, in this situation it is very important
to understand that in August of 2008 Moscow did not settle all of the
issues in the republic, but acquired a new set of complex problems and
obligations.
Sergey Markedonov is an independent political analyst and expert on the Caucasus.
Source: Russia Profile