From: MSN Nicknamepsychoteddybear24 (Original Message) Sent: 12/7/2007 6:52 AM
Chechnya Weekly- Volume VIII, Issue 47
December 6, 2007
IN THIS ISSUE:
* Kadyrov Delivers the Vote…
* ...As Do the Authorities in Ingushetia and Dagestan
* Policemen Targeted in Kabardino-Balkaria
* Briefs
* Peacekeepers or Provocateurs? Kremlin-Backed Chechen Troops Raise Tensions in Abkhazia and South Ossetia
By Andrew McGregor
* Is the Caucasian Emirate Threat a Threat to the Western World?
By Andrei Smirnov
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Kadyrov Delivers the Vote…
The results of the December 2 elections for the State Duma, in which the pro-Kremlin United Russia party received more than 64 percent of the vote nationwide in a contest that Russia’s opposition and foreign observers claim was neither free nor fair, were particularly suspect in the North Caucasus. Russia’s Central Election Commission (TsIK) reported that 99.21 percent of Chechnya’s eligible turned out to vote and that, of these, 99.36 percent voted for United Russia, whose ticket was headed by Vladimir Putin. Kavkazky Uzel reported on December 6 that according to the TsIK, 576,729 people in Chechnya voted in the State Duma election, meaning that only around 3,000 of the republic’s registered voters did not participate. According to Kavkazky Uzel, official turnout numbers in other republics of the North Caucasus were similarly impressive—98 percent in Ingushetia, 97 percent in Kabardino-Balkaria and 94 percent in Karachaevo-Cherkessia. The results of the State Duma elections are to be released December 7–8.
Interfax reported on December 2 that Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov had personally visited polling stations to observe the voting that day. “I am contented both the organization of the election campaign and the course of the voting itself,” the news agency quoted him as saying. “After numerous meetings and conversations with people who were at the polling stations, I can conclude that the election commissions took all the necessary measures to carry out the campaign successfully.” Newsru.com on December 2 reported that after voting in his native village of Tsentoroi, Kadyrov several times danced the lezghinka (a folk dance of the North Caucasus) outside, including with his sister Zulai Kadyrova. Reuters on December 3 quoted Kadyrov—who had promised to deliver 100 percent of Chechnya’s vote to Putin—as saying of the Soviet-style levels of putative voter participation in his republic: “High voter turnout in the parliamentary elections shows great civic responsibility. People understand that they have the right to choose.”
Interfax on December 5 quoted Kadyrov, who topped the list of United Russia candidates in Chechnya, as saying he would not leave his post as Chechnya’s president to take a seat in the State Duma. “Indeed, I was number one on the United Russia regional list for the State Duma elections,” Kadyrov told the news agency. “Everyone knows the result. The people have unconditionally backed the course led by the country’s and Chechen governments. Almost 100 percent of voters in Chechnya voted for United Russia. I take it not only as a result of the elections, but also as an answer to the question of confidence in us and as an assessment of the reforms occurring in Chechnya and the country.”
Kavkazky Uzel on December 4 quoted an unnamed local political scientist as saying that the local branches of the parties that lost the December 2 State Duma elections are unlikely to contest the results in Chechnya. “Ramzan Kadyrov is first on the list of Chechen United Russia people,” the political scientist told Kavkazky Uzel correspondent Sultan Abubakarov. “And the federal list [of candidates] from that party was headed by Vladimir Putin. Naturally, the leadership of other branches of political parties in Chechnya, whether it is the KPRF [the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the SPS [Union of Right Forces], the LDPR [Liberal Democratic Party of Russia] and so on, will not be protesting the results of the voting that took place in the republic. First of all, because it would raise doubts about the authority of the head of Chechnya.”
A representative of the liberal Yabloko party in Chechnya named Usman told Kavkazky Uzel: “United Russia’s victory around the country as a whole is associated with the name of Vladimir Putin. United Russia in Chechnya—it is Ramzan Kadyrov. As Mayakovsky said: ‘We say party, we imply…’(a reference to a line from a poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky: “When we say ‘Lenin’, we imply the Party, When we say ‘Party’, we imply ‘Lenin).”
A representative of a local human rights organization told Kavkazky Uzel: “It has been known around the world for a long time that that if such over-the-top number for the voters’ activeness are announced, it means a falsification.” He called the official turnout figure of 99-plus percent “totally ludicrous,” adding: “In my view, a maximum of 15-20 percent of the citizens takes part in any elections in our republic. And those are for the most part state workers. The people are simply tired of all of these election campaigns, given that people are firmly convinced the authorities will count the votes as they see fit. I spoke yesterday with a slew of my acquaintances, and there wasn’t one among them who went to vote. Everyone understands that 99.21 percent turnout is completely absurd, but they keep quiet. There’s simply nothing else they can do."
Timur Aliev, who ran in the latest State Duma election as a candidate from the Union of Right Forces (SPS), reported that based on his own observations, the turnout on December 2 was only 30 percent.
The December 2 elections in Chechnya also included a referendum on changes to the republic’s constitution, which—according to election officials—were passed overwhelmingly. RIA Novosti on December 6 quoted the head of Chechnya’s election commission, Ismail Baikhanov, as saying that 96.15 percent of those registered to participate in the referendum did so and that 96.88 percent of them voted in favor of the changes. The changes involved more than 50 articles of Chechnya’s constitution, including the right of the republic’s parliament to introduce any changes to the constitution and to the procedures for granting powers to the republic’s president.
Kavkazky Uzel quoted an anonymous Chechen political scientist as saying: “It is no secret to anyone that the republic’s parliament is completely loyal to and under the control of Ramzan Kadyrov. I will not be surprised if, in the near future, deputies of the parliament introduce changes in the article concerning the term of the head of the republic and increase it from four to five or seven years. Simultaneously, other norms may be introduced strengthening the regime of personal power in the republic.”
...As Do the Authorities in Ingushetia and Dagestan
Kavkazky Uzel reported on December 2, the day of the State Duma elections, that voter turnout in Ingushetia was more than 70 percent. The following day, however, Russia’s Central Election Commission (TsIK) reported a turnout of 92.11 percent. On December 4, Kavkazky Uzel reported that Ingushetia’s election commission put the turnout at 98.35 percent, 98.72 percent of whom voted for the pro-Kremlin United Russia party.
Whatever the case, the official numbers concerning the turnout in Ingushetia differed sharply from what independent observers saw. The independent Ingushetiya.ru website on December 2 reported that according to local observers, no more than eight percent of the republic’s registered voters went to the polls.
Kavkazky Uzel on December 4 quoted an anonymous “regional expert” as saying that the official results were no surprise. “Everyone understood that the turnout would be ‘traditionally high’, he said. “One can, of course, argue about the percentage of voters, however that will not influence the election’s results, not to mention the fact that, as far as I know, not one of the regional branches of the parties that participated in the election process plans to contest [the results]. What I have no doubt about is United Russia’s first-place showing. I think that a majority of the voters voted for the party, although perhaps not in such numbers as the republican election commission reported.”
The “expert” said that President Vladimir Putin’s high rating and the passive positions of other political parties probably helped United Russia. “Some of the voters don’t know parties other than United Russia, the LDPR [Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s Liberal Democratic Party of Russia] and the KPRF [Communist Party of the Russian Federation]. So are the results of the voting surprising?”
An anonymous Ingush political scientist told Kavkazky Uzel: “For the first time, an election campaign in Ingushetia took place without noise or hullaballoo. Only United Russia conducted active propaganda, in the form of several large posters, which were guarded round the clock by police. The other parties were not visible either on the eve of the elections or on Election Day. Moreover, there were extremely few observers from other parties at the polling stations. Members of the district election commissions could easily take advantage of that. Given 98 percent participation by citizens, lines should have formed at the polling stations. I didn’t see that. Nonetheless, the ‘necessary’ number for the results of the voting was sent to Moscow.”
According to official preliminary results, turnout in Dagestan on December 2 was 92 percent, with United Russia winning around 90 percent of the vote and the KPRF winning 8.56 percent. KPRF representatives in Dagestan insist the vote there was falsified and more than 100 members of the party gathered in Makhachkala on December 4 to protest the results. The first secretary of KPRF’s branch in Dagestan, Makhmud Makhmudov, said that “massive falsification” has been a feature of Dagestan’s elections since 1996. “Since that time, there have been more and more negatives in the elections,” he said. “And the mass violations reached their peak on December 2 … People understand that it’s a farce.” People in Dagstan registered their protest by not voting in the election, but the authorities made up for the low turn out by using their “administrative resources,” said Makhmudov.
For his part, Vladimir Yasnoi, a legal expert from the KPRF’s Central Committee, said the authorities in Dagestan grossly inflated the turnout by claiming that 1,300-1,500 people turned up at each polling station in the republic when in fact only 200-300 people came to each polling station. Kavkazky Uzel on December 4 quoted Yasnoi as saying that “outside people” were bussed in to polling stations where they were not registered and given ballots to vote—with five or six ballots going to each person in some cases. Meanwhile, KPRF members of the republic’s election commission were barred from or even thrown out of premises where ballots were being counted, Yasnoi charged. The KPRF has lodged formal complaints with the federal authorities about the alleged vote fraud in Dagestan and, more generally, will challenge the results of the voting nationwide in Russia’s Supreme Court.
According to the North Ossetia’s Central Election Commission, turnout in the republic was 60.3 percent, with 71.6 percent voting for United Russia and 10.88 percent voting for the KPRF. Kavkazky Uzel on December 5 quoted the head of the Union of Right Forces (SPS) branch in North Ossetia, Arkady Kadokhov, as saying that the ballots cast in the republic on December 2 were being tallied in the republic’s districts, not at the republic election commission’s headquarters as required by election law, in an effort to “adjust” the results. “If the elections had gone according to the [real] results, then the United Russia party would not have won more than 30 percent of the vote,” he said.
Sergei Markedonov, head of the Inter-Ethnic Relations Department at the Institute for Political and Military Analysis, said in a commentary for the Caucasus Times that the North Caucasus has long been a region in which elections, with their crushing victories for the “party of power,” bear no relationship to reality, Kavkazky Uzel reported on December 4. “It is not even a matter of mass falsification (even though the election headquarters of other parties are already presenting proof of this),” Markedonov said. “Or even of administrative resources, which, of course, are practically limitless there. From our point of view, the main problem is the significant gap between the formal and the real in the Caucasus region." He added that the “triumphal success” in the Caucasus of the “party of power” could not affect “the objective processes and challenges.” This means that election results showing overwhelming victories for the incumbent authorities do not “lower the number of Islamic radicals in Dagestan,” nor “resolve the problems of refugees in the zone of the Ossetian-Ingush conflict,” nor “avert the possibility of Chechen separatism again becoming a real political force,” nor “stop terrorist acts in Ingushetia,” said Markedonov. “These numbers express nothing other than a high index of bureaucratic zeal and diligence.” He added that not a single problem in the Caucasus region would be solved without “the de-privatization of power and the replacement of the imperial style of governing the region.”
Markedonov concluded: “Therefore the victorious reports about success should not fool anyone. Elections and reality in the Caucasus are located in parallel dimensions that do not intersect with one another.”
Policemen Targeted in Kabardino-Balkaria
Interfax reported on December 5 that a police captain was murdered in Kabardino-Balkaria. The incident took place in the village of Stary Cherek, in the republic’s Urvan district. An Urvan district law-enforcement source told the news agency that unidentified gunmen came to the home of the officer, who was a member of the district police department’s criminal investigation unit, knocked on his door and shot him. On December 4, unidentified gunmen with automatic weapons opened fire on a police post in the village of Khasanya, located in the suburbs of Nalchik. No policemen were hurt, and they returned fire on the attackers, who managed to escape into a wooded area. Kavkazky Uzel reported that a policeman was killed and two wounded in Khasanya during a shootout with unknown gunmen on November 19.
Meanwhile, the district court in Kabardino-Balkaria’s Elbrus district sentenced two policemen, Murat Baichekuev and Mukhammed Mashezov, to three years in prison for abducting, beating and torturing two teenagers, Yusup Nakani and Ravil Nuraliev, from the village of Neitrino, in the republic’s Elbrus district in August 2006.
