George Hewitt, professor of Caucasian languages at London's School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS)
The story of elections in Abkhazia since the end of the
fourteen-month war with Georgia in 1993 has been an honourable one for a young
state scarred by the legacy of conflict and destruction and subject to many
international pressures, threats and misunderstandings. In the last year,
Abkhazia's democratic experience has continued with the election of a new
president in August 2011 following the death of Sergej Bagapsh, and with
legislative elections in March 2012.
The constitutional processes governing these elections were
established in the early post-war years, notably by the constitution ratified
on 26 November 1994. The conditions prevailing in the Black Sea territory in
the aftermath of the war, which ended on 30 September 1993, had rendered
presidential elections impractical; so Abkhazia’s parliament, newly transformed
from the antecedent "Supreme Soviet", passed a resolution declaring
that Vladislav Ardzinba - who had assumed the chairmanship of the Supreme
Soviet before the war and then proved a charismatic war-leader - would be the
republic’s president. The constitution of November 1994 formalised the
situation where a dominant executive presidency and a subordinate legislature
operated in tandem to administer the state, with the first competitive elections
to the parliament taking place two years later in November 1996.
It is worth quoting from the Constitution of the Republic of
Abkhazia [Apsny] in order to grasp how far this document has both framed
electoral politics over the subsequent years and created potential ambiguities.
Articles 36 and 37 at the beginning of Chapter 3 on Legislative Power
respectively state that "All the legislative authority established by this
Constitution shall be exercised by the People’s Assembly (or Parliament) of the
Republic of Abkhazia" and that "The Parliament of the Republic of
Abkhazia shall consist of 35 members. The elections to the Parliament shall be
carried out on the basis of universal, equal and direct suffrage, by means of a
secret ballot. The Parliament’s term of office shall be five years. The
procedure for the Parliamentary elections shall be established by a
constitutional law."
In contrast, Chapter 4 on Executive Power begins with Article 48:
"Executive Power in the Republic of Abkhazia shall be granted to the
President of the Republic of Abkhazia. The President of the Republic of
Abkhazia shall be the head of state."
In the event, the relationship between these two arms of government
has generally been cordial, but there have been occasional strains. In 1998,
tensions arose when Vladislav Ardzinba was deemed to be behaving in a
high-handed way in trying to interfere in the parliament’s decision-making
process. In 2009, in the run-up to the presidential election, the incumbent
Sergej Bagapsh made a proposal to parliament that roused widespread opposition;
after protesters broke into a session of deputies, the proposal was returned to
Bagapsh with a request that he withdraw it.
(The president had wanted parliament to sanction the mass-issuing of
Abkhazian passports to the Mingrelian residents of the Gal district in eastern
Abkhazia, next to the border with Georgia, which would automatically have
granted them the right to vote. After the hastily conceived proposal was
dropped, only 3,581 Gal Mingrelians were left with permission to vote, of whom
2,947 cast their ballot (56% in favour of Bagapsh). Such disagreements testify
to the open nature of political debate in the state, as WAS noted with
reference to this dispute in Accord: an
international review of peace-initiatives [7 / 1999]).
The parliamentary
elections
Sergej Bagapsh was re-elected in 2009 and thus entered his second
(and final) five-year term as president. Under normal circumstances, the next
parliamentary elections should have been held half-way through his term, in
2012, and the next presidential election in 2014. But Bagapsh passed away in
Moscow on 29 May 2011, aged merely 62, due to complications following an
operation on his respiratory tract. Despite the unexpected and unwelcome shock,
calm prevailed in Abkhazia, and an emergency presidential election was held on
26 August 2011 (the date when Russia had recognised the independence of
Abkhazia and South Ossetia in 2008).
The candidates were vice-president Aleksandr Ankvab, prime minister
Sergej Shamba, and Raul Khadzhimba, who had held government posts under both
Ardzinba and Bagapsh (in the latter’s first term). The campaigning was
intensive and fully covered, free from bias, by all the media. The great
interest across the country was reflected in a turnout of 71.92% of the
electorate, with Ankvab securing a clear victory, thus obviating the need for
any run-off. The conduct of the ballot (with voting-slips cast into transparent
boxes) and the count (performed at each polling-station) was highly praised by
the more than 100 observers from a wide range of countries (from France to
Fiji). However, as with all the elections that have taken place in Abkhazia
since 1993, the presidential election was ritualistically condemned as
illegitimate by the bulk of the international community.
The legislative elections duly followed in two rounds on 10 March
and 24 March 2012. Perhaps as a result of voter-fatigue, and despite both
active campaigning and wide media coverage after the manner of the preceding presidential
campaign, the turnout was markedly lower (44.51% in the first round, 46.21% in
the second). Abkhazia's thirty-five constituencies were contested by 148
candidates in all, but the country's majoritarian system meant that on 10 March
only thirteen candidates passed the necessary threshold.
One of these was Raul Khadzhimba, chairman of an opposition party, the
"Forum of National Unity of Abkhazia" (he had trailed in third position
in the 2011 presidential poll), suggesting that the label of "political
corpse" attached to him then was somewhat premature. There was instant
speculation that Khadzhimba, once elected, might become the next
speaker, though it was Valerij Bganba, a member of the previous
parliament, who gained ↑ ↑ this post on 3 April.
A further twenty deputies were elected on 24 March; there will be a
re-run on 6 May in one constituency (number 1) where the turnout was too low,
and the supreme court has yet to rule on the contested vote in another
polling-district (number 21) where toponymist Valerij Kvarchia is one of the
contenders (Kvarchia heads the Abkhazian commission that is contesting Russia’s
territorial claim to the Abkhazian village of Aibga and its environs). The entire
process was again overseen by a range of international observers, who found the
proceedings to be above reproach. The first session of the newly elected
parliament was held on 10 April.
156 candidates had initially put their names forward, thirty-five of
whom were nominated by registered political parties and 126 by "initiative
groups" (thus manifesting a degree of doubling in nomination). The central
election commission approved 151 names, three of whom then withdrew. Of the
remaining 148 candidates, 125 were Abkhazians, even though they compose roughly
50% of the population; this underlines the dominant position of Abkhazians in
local politics since 1993. The other ethnic groups (with the possible exception
of the Kartvelians, predominantly the Gal Mingrelians, who continue to reside
in Abkhazia) still seem to be content with this situation, in recognition of
the fact that the Abkhazians made the greatest sacrifice in the
Georgian-Abkhazian war.
The other candidates included eleven Armenians (from around 17% of
the population), eight Russians (some 10% of the population), two Greeks, two
Kartvelians (around 20% of the population), one Kabardian and one Ossete. Among
the thirty-three already elected deputies there are three Armenians and one
Mingrelian. Only one woman, Emma Gamisonia, was elected; former deputy speaker
Irine Agrba (and, indeed, former speaker Nugzar Ashuba) being among the six of
nine former deputies who failed to secure re-election.
In terms of political affiliation, four of the eleven candidates
from opposition parties were successful (all from Khadzhimba’s party), while
only three members of the main party that supported the Bagapsh-Ankvab ticket
in 2009 ("United Abkhazia") were elected - and among the unsuccessful
candidates was that party’s chairman, Daur Tarba. This might be interpreted (at
first glance) as an expression of disappointment in Ankvab’s presidency after
only eight months. This would not necessarily be an accurate assessment, for
United Abkhazia was the creation of, and particularly associated with, the late
Sergej Bagapsh, whereas Ankvab’s party-support had originally come from smaller
groupings which did not nominate any candidates in this election. How else,
then, to evaluate the outcome?
The resilient republic
Among the reasons often given for Aleksandr Ankvab’s victory in 2011
is that he was seen as the most likely to pursue a determined fight
against corruption and to establish the rule of law. He had stated in
his manifesto the need for reforms in (inter alia) the interior
ministry; and in mid-February 2012, he again singled out this ministry
as meriting special attention at the same time as enforcing a range of
personnel changes. A matter of days later, an attempt was made on
Ankvab’s life - the sixth since his return to politics in Abkhazia
following some years of success in business in Moscow (where he had
moved after disagreement with Ardzinba in the wake of Abkhazia’s victory
in the war with Georgia).On the morning of 22 February, the motorcade conveying the president on his daily journey along the single highway connecting his home in Gudauta to his office in Sukhum came under attack ↑ ↑ from a roadside-bomb and sustained gunfire; Ankvab escaped unharmed, but two bodyguards perished.
In these circumstances, an interpretation of the parliamentary-election result suggests itself. Could it be that the voting public decided not to be taken for granted by meekly following previous voting patterns but rather (in a spirit of "a plague on all your houses") to give their support to some new blood in the hope that a parliament so constituted would be more likely to buttress Ankvab’s anti-corruption drive ↑ ↑ ? If so, this might be said to betoken a certain level of sophistication amongst the Abkhazian electorate.
In the meantime, Abkhazia’s international position remains unaltered. The collective refusal of most states to offer recognition ↑ ↑ to Abkhazia and its elections is a stance they seek to justify largely by reference to the fact that so many of Abkhazia’s pre-war Kartvelian (mostly Mingrelian) population have not lived there since September 1993 but eke out a frequently miserable existence as refugees (or internally displaced persons [IDPs], to use the term insisted upon by those who deem Abkhazia to be still part of Georgia) in Georgia or elsewhere. The territorial integrity of (Soviet) Georgia continues to be assigned precedence by the European Union, the United States ↑ ↑ and most United Nations member-states over the Abkhazians’ right to self-determination (though when it comes to the Falkland Islands in the south Atlantic, the British government at least prioritises self-determination).This stance does nothing to alter Abkhazians' desire to strengthen ↑ ↑ their hard-won independence ↑ ↑ , which also means improving the economy and addressing social problems (such as reducing the number of senseless deaths on the roads; a recent accident near Gudauta which claimed six young lives is an example of the kind of waste that the country cannot afford). The search continues for wider recognition, or, failing that, to persuade the international community at least to allow citizens of Abkhazia to travel the world on the strength of Abkhazia’s own passports, which fully comply with international standards (just as countries that do not recognise Taiwan or Kosovo accept these states’ passports as valid documents for travel purposes). This issue was on the agenda of the Abkhazian delegation for the latest round of talks ↑ ↑ in Geneva on 29 March, though no time was left to discuss it. The Georgian side, for its part, persisted in its attempt to score points over a non-issue, namely the renovation of Christian monuments on the territory of Abkhazia. The groundless allegation was made (and widely circulated in the international media) that the Abkhazians are taking the opportunity to erase ↑ ↑ Georgian traces in the local architecture. This contrived argument contrasts sharply with the very real act of cultural vandalism, motivated by a desire to liquidate documentary evidence of the Abkhazian presence on their home soil, whereby in the early stages of the 1992-93 war the Abkhazian research institute and library along with the state archives were deliberately torched with the loss of thousands of precious (and in many cases irreplaceable) documents and books.
The Abkhazians have responded to the accusations by allowing international inspection of the renovations ↑ ↑ at the Elyr (Ilori) monastery, where the visitors found nothing to criticise. As regards the Bedia church, which was built by, and is the site of the burial of, King Bagrat II (IIIrd by the Georgian reckoning), who became the first sovereign ↑ ↑ of the mediaeval united "Kingdom of the Abkhazians and Georgians" a millennium ago, it is pointed out that it was shelling by the Georgian side during the war which caused the most recent damage to this monument.
The church is a source of great pride for both the Abkhazian church and the public at large, as witnessed by the pages and photographs devoted to it in such luxurious publications as the 128-page book The Holy Sites of Abkhazia (in Russian) or the 239-page album Abkhazia (in Russian and English), both published in 2010 (see Semen Pegov, "Anzor Agumaa: Tbilisi Raised The Issue of the Bedia Church for Political Reasons ↑ ↑ ", AbkhazWorld, 4 February 2012).
In turn this dispute has been overshadowed by renewed tension resulting from the investigation into the 22 February attack on the president. Several individuals had been detained ↑ ↑ when, on 17 April, moves were made to arrest a 53-year-old former senior official, Aslambej Kchach (he had served from 1993-96 as head of the administration’s bodyguard service, and from 1996-2003 as the republic’s interior minister under President Ardzinba). Kchach thwarted the effort to arrest him by shooting ↑ ↑ himself, while on the same day another suspect already in detention, Timur Khutaba, was found hanging in his cell, and a third suspect also tried to commit suicide.
The combination of a president's death, two elections, an assassination attempt, struggles over recognition, domestic economic and social problems, the need to deflect baseless charges - and now, the messy and violent circumstances of the investigation into the attack on President Ankvab, has made for an eventful year. Abkhazia's democracy and institutions have thus far proved resilient. The challenges ahead may require that they become even more so.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/george-hewitt/democracy-in-abkhazia-testing-year
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