RUSSIA: Russian officials hailed Chechnya's presidential election as a resounding success yesterday, declaring the Kremlin's candidate as the winner and claiming that almost 80 per cent of voters had cast their ballots in peace, in a region shattered by two wars in a decade between Moscow's troops and separatist rebels. Daniel McLaughlin reports.
This despite one man blowing himself up at a polling station and candidates, voters and rights groups denouncing as a fix the election to find a successor to pro-Moscow leader Mr Akhmad Kadyrov, who was assassinated in May.
"The presidential candidate Alu Alkhanov, according to preliminary results has already passed the 50 per cent barrier necessary to become elected head of the republic," said Mr Sergei Abramov, acting president since Mr Kadyrov was blown up.
Maj Gen Alkhanov, Chechnya's top police official, has appeared regularly on television and met Russian President Vladimir Putin, while his six opponents in the election have been anonymous to the point of invisibility.
"Violations were manifested everywhere," protested one of those candidates, Mr Movsur Khamidov. One of his representatives said he discovered that ballot boxes at one polling station were almost full of voting slips just 15 minutes after the station opened.
"They are just giving results according to a predetermined plan without any regard for real numbers," Mr Khamidov said.
An official from Chechnya's pro-Moscow administration confirmed such suspicions.
"Of course these are not elections!" he told AFP news agency at one polling station. "You can easily see what is happening. Whatever the voting slip that goes into the ballot box looks like, the candidate chosen by the Kremlin will be elected. And to the indifference of the international community."
Mr Abdul-Kerim Arsakhanov, head of Chechnya's local election commission, was adamant that the vote had been free and fair.
"Not one single serious incident linked to voting was recorded during the entire day," he insisted, dismissing as a minor incident the death of one man who was challenged by police as he approached a polling station with a suspicious package.
"He began to run. It blew up. He died," Mr Arsakhanov said in the regional capital, Grozny.
"Anyone, without a preconceived idea of what's happening in Chechnya, can be sure that the streets of Grozny are full of people and that active voting is taking place," he said, declaring turnout at 79.3 per cent.
Reports from around Chechnya suggested that a far smaller number had actually ventured to the ballot box, amid tight security that has seen thousands of servicemen flood the republic to protect a poll that rebels vowed to disrupt.
Many believe they made good on their promise with an unprecedented attack last week, when two airliners crashed, killing all 89 people on board, after what Russian officials say were midair explosions caused by a substance previously used by Chechnya's guerrillas.
In Moscow, transport and security officials met to discuss how to tighten security at Russia's airports and on its vast road and rail network.
Interior Ministry officials said they would discuss air safety with their counterparts in the United States and Israel, and consider the possibility of placing armed "sky marshals" in civilian clothes on airliners servicing potentially dangerous routes.
Mr Putin refuses to admit that a guerrilla war is raging in Chechnya, after coming to power in 2000 on a pledge to crush rebels who he accuses of being funded by groups linked to al-Qaeda.