Dagestani Court Overturns Disputed Oct. 11 Poll

In a highly unusual decision, a Dagestani court has overturned the results of a mayoral election in the city of Derbent, making a repeat of the vote a real possibility.

The ruling, made late last week by the Derbent City Court, also sends a strong message to the Kremlin, which must soon decide whether to re-appoint Mukhu Aliyev as the president of the volatile North Caucasus republic.

In the Oct. 11 vote, Aliyev had backed incumbent Mayor Felix Kaziakhmedov, who was also United Russia’s candidate. Kaziakhmedov won the election with 67.52 percent of the vote.

The election was marred by violent protests that prompted presidential envoy Vladimir Ustinov to fly to the city to restore order.

OMON riot police officers reportedly used tear gas and even shot at voters, wounding one, to prevent them from entering polling stations to vote. Only 23 of 36 stations opened after local election officials said they had received threats and could not guarantee security.

Yet Dagestan’s election committee later declared the vote to be fair and proclaimed Kaziakhmedov the winner.

The election in Derbent, which has a population of about 100,000 and claims to be the country’s oldest city, was seen by opposition politicians and independent election observers as the worst example of vote-rigging in Oct. 11 regional polls.

As a result, the State Duma’s three opposition parties decided to boycott the parliament and won a promise from President Dmitry Medvedev to review election laws. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has said that anyone unhappy with the Oct. 11 elections should turn to the courts.

It is extremely rare for Russian courts to overturn elections. In the past, such cases have been viewed as the result of Kremlin pressure to remove undesired candidates from elected office. This was the case when a Nizhny Novgorod court overturned the city’s 1998 mayoral election where the winner, maverick businessman Andrei Klimentyev, was later convicted on embezzlement charges.

The Derbent court ruling on Thursday was hailed as an important moral victory by supporters of Kaziakhmedov’s main rival, former Dagestani chief prosecutor Imam Yaraliyev.

“This was the only just decision the court could make,” said Nariman Abdumutalibov, deputy head of the Suleiman-Stalsky district council.

Yaraliyev, who got 27.7 percent of the vote, heads the administration for the district, located outside Derbent.

“This was a beastly, brutal vote. In effect, most of the voters were members of the OMON riot police units,” Abdumutalibov said by telephone from Kasumkent, the seat of the local administration.

Aliyev, however, indicated that the court ruling would be contested. “Not a single representative of the election committee was present at the court, and the judge did not discuss any of its documents,” Aliyev said Friday, RIA-Novosti reported.

Dagestani election committee chief Magomed Dibirov complained to the Kavkaz Uzel web site that the court had ignored a request by Derbent’s top election official to postpone the hearing because he was ill in the hospital.

A senior United Russia official said the party was waiting for a final court ruling. “We have a decision at the lowest level. … We will wait until it goes into force and then respect it,” party council secretary Vyacheslav Volodin said, Interfax reported.

Both sides may file a complaint within 10 days of the ruling. If not, a new election must be scheduled within three months, the Central Election Commission said in a statement.

Thursday’s ruling was prompted by complaints from Elkhan Kazimov and Salikh Ramazanov, two other candidates in the mayoral election. Each garnered less than 1 percent of the vote.

Yaraliyev had filed a separate complaint with the Derbent City Court, and it was unclear Sunday when it would be heard.

Political observers said Thursday’s ruling bodes ill for the Dagestani president because it signals that he lacks political control in the region.

Aliyev’s term expires in February. Medvedev has not given any indication whether he will be reappointed.

Aliyev said Friday that while Medvedev could pick from a “wide choice” of candidates, he was convinced that the president would make a decision “that will be supported by all Dagestanis.”

Alexei Malashenko, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center, said the Kremlin probably had not made a final decision yet. “This will be decided between the Kremlin, Makhachkala and the Dagestani community in Moscow,” Malashenko said.

United Russia last month presented Medvedev with a list of five presidential candidates, including Aliyev. A recent Kremlin reform allows the strongest regional party to forward at least three candidates as regional leader.

Enver Kisriyev, a Caucasus analyst with the Regional Research Center in the Academy of Sciences, said the race has already been won by Aliyev because all his rivals on United Russia’s list of candidates are third-tier politicians. “If the Kremlin were to choose another candidate, this would lead to instability,” he said.

But the list has created a flap, with the United Russia-dominated Dagestani legislature complaining in an open letter to Medvedev that it contained unfit candidates. The protest was led by supporters of Makhachkala Mayor Said Amirov, causing some observers to say it was sparked by rivalry between the Avars and Dargins, Dagestan’s biggest ethnic groups. Amirov is a Dargin, while Aliyev is an Avar.

But Kisriyev noted that there is considerable opposition to Aliyev among the Avars and that the Derbent rivals, Kaziakhmedov and Yaraliyev, are both ethnic Lezgins. Political loyalty, he explained, does not follow ethnic lines but divisions along smaller communities, and this is a reason why Dagestan is the last place in the region with political pluralism. “Nowhere else in the North Caucasus can you find so much media freedom and open criticism of the regional government,” he said.