On Sunday, November 27, South Ossetia held the second round of the presidential elections. 30 000 people participated in the voting process. The candidates in the second round were the head of the emergency ministry of South Ossetia, Anatoly Bibilov ,and the former education minister of South Ossetia, Alla Dzhoyeva, supported by the opposition. The positions of the candidates were similar, but the results of the elections gave Dzhoyeva victory. On Tuesday, November 29, the Supreme Court of South Ossetia considered the results of the second round of the presidential elections invalid due to violations despite innovative approaches of fight against falsification of voting.
According to the State Duma Deputy Arkady Baskaev, where he served as an observer, the representatives of both candidates had to put their signature on the back of each ballot paper to legitimize it and the voter as well. In addition, each passport was stamped when its owner came to the voting station. According to the constitutional law of South Ossetia On Presidential Elections in the Republic of South Ossetia, if elections of president are considered invalid, the parliament of the republic appoints new elections. Moreover, candidates, who caused invalidity of the elections, cannot participate in new elections.
New elections were appointed on March 25th, 2012. The Supreme Court suspended Alla Dzhoyevf from participation in them. According to the court, her supporters are guilty in many violations in the process of the elections on November 27. Arkady Baskayev said that accuracy of counting of votes was ruined. Not everybody got the stamp in the passport, some managed to get in without it and go straight to the lists of voters. There were many people with absentee ballots, because the situation with registration is still quite complicated. Secondly, when people got the ballot paper and went to the representatives of the candidates to get the mark on the back, it reduced speed of voting process.
Baskaev told that foreign observers sometimes were not freely allowed to ballot stations: “I was almost forbidden to enter this voting station because, according to its head, an international observer does not have the right to attend a count of votes, although there were many people who had nothing to do with the count of votes. When the count of votes started, considering the problems that I mentioned, it turned out that there are many spoiled bulletins. Why? It was decided that if there is no signature of the observers on the back of the paper, it is not valid. If the tick against the name of the candidate goes beyond the frame drawn for it, the ballot was also considered spoilt. At a small voting station with only 485 potential voters, 388 of whom came to vote, there were about 20 ballots that were considered not valid, It seems to be a small number, but in fact when these problems were put together from all 85 polling stations, it could result in the mistake of some thousands of votes lost or gained by the candidates.”
He believes that the decision of the Supreme Court of the republic is justified. Baskayv said that the residents of Ossetia need to wait for the next elections set by the parliament for March 25. And the most important thing is to avoid violence.
Meanwhile, Alla Dzhoyeva didn’t agree with the decision of the Supreme Court and as the elected president formed the state council on November 30th in South Ossetia.
