Abkhaz Deadlock Continues

On October 20, Abkhazia’s supreme court resolved for a third time to postpone its verdict on whether to announce a rerun of the presidential election or declare opposition candidate Sergei Bagapsh the victor.

As deadlock continued in the unrecognised republic for a third week following the October 3 election, Bagapsh appeared to be gradually gaining the upper hand, winning the endorsement of many key figures in Abkhazia.

Bagapsh, head of Abkhazia’s energy company, emerged as the leader of an opposition alliance against the official candidate, prime minister Raul Khajimba, who received open backing from Russia.

After long delays, on October 12, the republic’s electoral commission declared Bagapsh the winner with 50.08 per cent of the vote.

The ruling served only to deepen the political crisis. The chairman of the commission, Sergei Smyr, announced he was resigning, and Khajimba called the verdict illegal.

Khajimba went to court to try to get the ballot in the southern Gali district declared illegitimate. Bagapsh had been pronounced the winner in Gali, which has a majority Georgian population, but Khajimba and other officials said the voting had been marred by irregularities.

Without the votes he received in Gali, Bagapsh would be four per cent short of a win.

The ongoing drama, with moves and counter-moves by the two candidates, has shaken the whole of Abkhazia and has caused divisions both within the institutions of state and among the population as a whole.

These are the first elections offering Abkhazians a genuine choice since the republic unilaterally broke away from Georgia in 1993, after a bloody war that saw the exodus of almost all the ethnic Georgian population.

Abkhazia’s first elected leader, Vladislav Ardzinba, who has heavily supported his protégé Khajimba, has been too sick to take part in active politics for several years.

Although the election has not been recognised by the international community, because Abkhazia is not recognised as an independent state, local institutions have taken their mandates extremely seriously.

The head of the supreme court, Alla Avidzba, who supported Bagapsh, resigned, refusing to comment on her reasons for doing so.

On October 20, the court session was postponed after Khajimba’s lawyers complained that the sitting judge was Georgy Akaba, brother of well-known opposition leader Natella Akaba.

For the past week, Khajimba’s supporters have held a demonstration inside the Sukhum philharmonia building and picketed the general prosecutor’s office and parliament. Many top officials have spoken out in support of the former prime minister.

The opposition, for its part, called a “national gathering” in the centre of Sukhum. These gatherings take part very rarely – once a decade or so – and generally constitute a kind of national referendum on some important issue.

On October 14, around 10,000 people turned out to support Bagapsh. Public figures including Avidzba, the vice-president, the prosecutor general and the speaker of parliament addressed the crowd alongside opposition leaders.

The prosecutor general, Rauf Korua, publicly tore apart Khajimba’s arguments for declaring the voting in Gali illegal.

The gathering ended in agreement that Bagapsh was rightful president of Abkhazia.

Khajimba’s supporters hit back by saying the gathering did not represent the view of the entire population.

Korua and Khajimba were heard to quarrel, and the prosecutor later said the latter had threatened to kill him. Outgoing president Ardzinba called on parliament to sack Korua, but the deputies would only agree to a compromise solution whereby Korua was sent on leave.

The whole election drama has been heavily influenced by Russia, which has been deeply involved in Abkhaz affairs for more than a decade.

Moscow openly supported Khajimba before the election, and rumours circulated that relations with Russia, which provides Abkhazia’s economic lifeline, would suffer if its favourite was not successful.

Bagapsh, whose wife is Georgian, was openly accused by Khajimba supporters of being pro-Georgian, while the opposition portrayed Khajimba as a Moscow lackey who would shut down all democratic institutions.

The latter predictions have come close to being fulfilled. After the election a new prime minister, Nodar Khashba, was appointed with the clear backing of Moscow. Censorship was imposed on state television and no non-government newspaper has appeared for a week, with printers refusing to publish such papers not only in Abkhazia, but in the nearby Russian city of Sochi.

The official reason is given as technical problems at printing shops. But local editors do not believe this for a moment. “We’ve published our paper in Sochi for four years,” said Izida Chania, editor of Nuzhnaya Gazeta. “But now we are told it won’t be printed, although the print workers have told us confidentially that the town leadership has given them the order.”

The election deadlock and possible outcomes are an ongoing topic of conversation throughout Abkhazia, but the atmosphere remains generally calm and so far there is little sense of real crisis.

One enterprising man called Artur, from the town of Gulprish, is keenly awaiting the court’s decision, because it will mean the hundreds of election posters can finally be taken down.

“I’ve tested their quality and found that the Sergei Bagapsh posters are made of very thin material,” Artur explained to IWPR. “The posters where Khajimba is next to Putin are very tough, like tarpaulin. In summer I go to the mountains, but my old tent there is covered in holes.

“I’ll make a good new tent out of these posters. Then I’ll be able to say that Mr Putin and Raul Khajimba are personally protecting me from the rain.”

Inal Khashig is co-editor of IWPR’s Caucasus newspaper Panorama in Abkhazia.