Monday, Nov 28, 2005
Hope Dies Last: Chechnya Votes For a New Parliament
|
|
Selling sweets and cigarettes at a street kiosk in Grozny's Staropromyslovsky district amid houses destroyed by war and election posters painting a brighter future, Chaukha Kartoyeva says she has given up on politicians.
 A Chechen girl waits for her mother to casts a ballot at a polling station
© AFP Viktor Drachev"No-one is going to do any good for us... Voting won't help us," says Kartoyeva, complaining the roof of her home, destroyed in an ongoing war between separatist fighters and Russian forces, has not been repaired in years.
Chechens voting Sunday in local parliamentary elections for the first time in eight years appeared to do so more out of desperation than conviction, with war compensation payments, job creation and the restoring security among their chief concerns.
"There's lawlessness here... We want our human rights to be defended," said Zara Ibragimova, a schoolteacher in Gorna-Gorsk, standing in the shadow of a gutted building.
"I asked them to restore our school, not to line their pockets," Ibragimova said she told candidates who came to the village, set in the barren hills of central Chechnya.
Dozens of people voted in four villages of western and central Chechnya and three polling stations in Grozny visited by a government-organised tour with police and army escort.
But no one could be seen outside three polling stations passed along the way and reporters attempting to speak to inhabitants beyond the perimeter of polling stations were prevented from doing so.
Dozens of soldiers, police officers and members of pro-Moscow Chechen militias, some wearing Muslim skullcaps, stood guard, with officials saying more than 20,000 police officers had been deployed to ensure security.
 A Russian soldier guards outside a polling station in the village of Gorsky in Chechnya
© AFP Viktor Drachev "Everyone to the elections!" urged banners strung up in the derelict villages of Chechnya, where some election posters read "Serving the people is my honour!" and "We are patriots - We are for Chechnya!"
But local allegiances, more than familiarity with campaign promises or party platforms, appeared key in deciding the minds of some voters.
"There's more chance they'll do something if you know the candidates," said Akhmed Gilikhanov, a farmer in the village of Bratskoye in the flatlands of western Chechnya.
"The most important thing is for people to have jobs and for the banditism to end," said Gilikhanov, who wore a sheepskin coat under the morning sun outside the village polling station.
Inside, by the voting booth, hung a poster of former pro-Moscow Chechen president Akhmat Kadyrov - assassinated in a massive bomb blast in Grozny's stadium last year - reading "Unvanquished Leader."
Two villagers danced, their arms aloft, to the drums and accordion accompaniment of a local folk music group as locals stood by and clapped.
In the neighbouring village of Gvardieiskoye, Magomed Zaid, 18, a student, said he voted for an independent candidate who lived on his street and hoped the man would bring jobs to the village: "Almost no one has a job around here."
Large posters of Chechnya's late president and his son, Deputy Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov, who heads a pro-Moscow militia of several thousand men and is seen as Chechnya's main power-broker in Chechnya, dominated in Grozny.
"We love and remember!" read one poster set up over a crossroads in the city and showing Akhmat Kadyrov hugging children.
In another, hanging off the side of a crumbling apartment block, Ramzan Kadyrov, widely regarded as the main beneficiary of a parliamentary vote stacked with his supporters, was depicted receiving a medal from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Outside the polling station in Staropromyslovsky, district head Khozh-Baudi Istamirov said the new parliament would give Chechens greater control over local budgets and that rule by Kadyrov would be no bad thing.
"There will be fully-legitimised authority. We will have our own budget and we can decide what to build and when," Istamirov said, adding that Kadyrov "would definitely make a good president."
"The people would support him 100 percent," said Istamirov as a bodyguard in the black uniform of the Kadyrov militia, clutching a Kalashnikov rifle and strapped with grenades, stood guard behind him.
 View and Post comment on this article
© 2005 AFP. All rights of reproduction and distribution reserved. All information displayed on this section (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse. |
