03 December 2007, 11:11
Local observers assert high voter turnout in Chechnya to be a gerrymander
The voter turnout of 99.21 percent on December 2, announced by the Chechen Electoral Commission, is hardly real. However, the outcome of this sort could be anticipated.
A spokesman of one of local human rights organizations said:
"It is well-known all over the world for a long time that wherever and whenever they announce such 'empyreal' figures of voters' activity, it always means falsification. ...In my opinion, any elections held in the territory of our Republic attract maximum 15-20 percent of citizens. Basically, they are civil servants. People are just exhausted by all these electoral campaigns, and they are firmly convinced that all the same the authorities will count votes as they need to."
"I'm confident that 'Yedinaya Rossiya' has not won this number of votes as a whole over the country," Isa Mamuev, a resident of Grozny, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent. "The leaders of this Party have actually nothing to offer to the people, except the 'Putin's Plan' known to very few. There's no need to speak about the 'Spravedlivaya Rossiya' (Rightful Russia), a daughter of the 'Yedinaya Rossiya'. Whom the Kremlin has decided to let to the Duma, those representatives have passed through. As to the Union of Right-Wing Forces (SPS), 'Yabloko' and others who had really offered changes for the better, they found themselves just below the 7-percent barrier. Not because people did not vote for then, but because the ruling power would not want it."
Timur Aliev, candidate to the RF State Duma from Chechnya in the SPS party list, has informed that according to his personal observations the voter turnout made only 30 percent.
Author: Sultan Abubakarov, CK correspondent
