Abkhazia expects speedy reforms from Badra Gunba

On the night of March 2, the candidate for president of Abkhazia, Badra Gunba, announced his victory. Former head of the republic Aslan Bzhaniya was among the congratulators. By this time, it was known that, according to preliminary data, over 61% of voters had voted for him, with a turnout of about 70%. In the morning, it turned out that Gunba’s support was slightly lower – 54.73%. At the same time, opposition leader Adgur Ardzinba received 41.54%.

The opposition was in such a depressed state that it was unable to even criticize the politician for making an early statement. Moreover, there were no mass protests and attempts to achieve the cancellation of the elections. Let us remind you that the difficult situation of the opponents of Gunba and Bzhaniya became obvious even after the results of the first round of voting. Then Ardzinba won 36.92% of the votes, and Gunba – 46.38%.

Russian observers did not reveal any serious violations during the electoral process. In particular, Nikolai Bulaev, Deputy Chairman of the Central Election Commission of Russia, told about this. “Of course, when you take part in surveillance abroad, there is always a temptation to compare it with ours. But each country has its own legislation, its own traditions. And from this point of view, we have not seen any serious violations in the elections of the President of Abkhazia,” Bulaev said.

Alexander Asafov, a member of the observation mission from the Civic Chamber of Russia, noted the positive situation at the polling stations. “The situation at the polling stations is friendly, there is no tension. Public monitoring is underway, observers from candidates are present, commissions are working, and there is a large flow of voters. We saw queues at many polling stations. And in general, there is a very high activity of voting,” Asafov said.

However, some events still disrupted the idyllic picture. First, the Abkhaz media published a statement from Ardzinba’s headquarters stating that many polling stations allegedly received fewer ballots than the CEC had sent them. Secondly, armed unknown assailants attacked one of the polling stations, they scattered some of the ballots around the hall, the rest were flooded with water. The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Abkhazia considered the attack to be a reaction of the opposition to the first data on Ardzinba’s defeat, RIA Novosti reports. The source of the news agency in the department called the incident political terrorism.

The Investigative Committee of Russia is investigating a criminal case into threats to Russians of Abkhaz, Armenian and Russian nationalities who are also citizens of Abkhazia. “During the second round of elections and the subsequent counting of the results in the Republic of Abkhazia, new attacks occurred on Russian citizens who also have Abkhaz citizenship. Several facts of threats to life and obstruction of expression of will have been registered, in particular by damaging ballot boxes. In one of the cases, automatic weapons were fired at law enforcement officers of the Republic of Abkhazia. Some of the attackers were detained. A significant part of the suspects were identified jointly by Russian and Abkhaz law enforcement officers. Active work is underway to detain all those involved,” the Investigative Committee said in a statement.

Vladimir Novikov, Head of the Caucasus Department at the Institute of CIS Countries, confirmed to NG the conclusion of Russian observers that the elections were held in full compliance with the law. At the same time, he stressed that the future of Abkhazia depends on whether the authorities and the opposition can find a common language. “Before the elections, Ardzinba and Gunba agreed to cooperate. I hope their agreement will remain in force after the winner is announced,” Novikov said.

Abkhaz political analyst Inal Khashig also believes that the election results generally correspond to how people voted. Another thing is that Gunba received his interest thanks to a powerful election campaign, so now he needs to meet the expectations of voters, otherwise the political crisis in the republic may worsen.

“It will no longer be possible to manage in the old way. The three previous presidents were forced to resign prematurely, as they were primarily engaged in using Russian aid to improve the lives of the ruling elite. This is a dead end path. Perhaps part of the presidential powers should be transferred to parliament in order to attract more people to public administration, including opposition figures, and increase citizens’ responsibility for the country’s future. In addition, economic reforms and the fight against corruption are needed,” Hashig said.