By Spartak Zhidkov, exclusively to VK
In the 1990s, after the war with Georgia for independence, Abkhaz society perceived strife among political factions as an inadmissible luxury. However, the 1996 elections still demonstrated a great deal of competition among parties, while the elections of 2002 changed the balance of powers in the country completely. 10 years ago there were three competing forces: radical opposition (present-day ruling party, the supporters of Alexander Anquab), ruling party (presently the opposition), while the veterans of the Georgian-Abkhaz war formed centrist group “Amtsakhara”. The Central Election Committee banned a great number of opposition candidates under different pretexts, so the opposition movement chose to boycott the elections protesting this abuse of power by the government. In these conditions the veteran movement easily won the parliamentary elections.
Having won almost a half of parliamentary seats, “Amtsakhara” opposed the government a year later. The supporters of the government tried to form a coalition, but it failed and independent MPs supported the veterans.
Sergei Bagapsh won the 2004 presidential elections as he managed to unite the “Amtsakhara” and the radical opposition that refused to participate in the 2002 elections. Since then the President and the Parliament have been working together without fighting each other.
However, in 2007, when parliamentary elections were held, the ex-ruling party, now the new opposition, managed to recover from their defeat and won the elections in 6 districts of Abkhazia. However, Bagapsh and his team managed to prevent the victory of their opponents in the second round and in the end only 7 opposition politicians entered parliament.
Of course, one should expect some interesting developments during the 2012 parliamentary elections. Supporters of the principle Anquab rival Raul Khadzhimba (it is possible that he himself will run for MP) will try to make the best of the opportunity that has presented itself; and in some districts of Abkhazia they have a decent chance of winning. It is yet unclear whether Sergei Shamba will take part in the campaigning or not, as the party organizations supporting him have been inactive for the past two years.
However, the Economic development Party, led by Beslan Butba, has been pretty active. This politician participated in 2009 elections, while during recent parliamentary elections chose to support Mr Samba. Mr Butba tries to keep the people aware of his party’s existence at all times, especially as Abkhaz media is open for opposition election campaigning.
Nevertheless, oppositionists suggest that the government is going to rig the upcoming elections using the so-called ‘additional voters lists’ (due to the current situation in Abkhazia a lot of people do not live in towns or villages were they are registered, so each polling station has these ‘additional voters lists’).
The upcoming parliamentary elections will determine the new conditions of interaction between the ruling party and the opposition/ Initially these 2012 parliamentary elections were supposed to be nothing but a warm up for the 2014 presidential campaigning, but this model was destroyed by President Bagapsh’s untimely demise. Now the parliamentary elections are to become a closing act of political strife in Abkhazia that will determine the balance of powers for the next five years.
