The breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia was voting for a new parliament on Sunday, brushing off new President Mikhail Saakashvili's pledge to unite his fractured Caucasus nation. Mountainous South Ossetia is one of two Georgian regions that broke away in bloody wars in the early 1990s. It rejects Tbilisi's rule and wants unity with northern neighbour Russia. Saakashvili has already driven out the leader of the Black Sea Adzhara region, which had never declared independence but was beyond central government control, but analysts say South Ossetia and Abkhazia will be harder to rein in. The South Ossetian economy has crumbled along with its roads, and houses in the capital Tskhinvali still bear 13-year-old bullet scars, but local leader Eduard Kokoity said his region would never bow to rule from Tbilisi. "Our only task is to join the Russian Federation," he told journalists at a polling station, fresh from laying flowers at a monument to the "Victims of Georgian Aggression."
"Money cannot buy off our fight for independence from Georgia. Our desire to join Russia is not for sale. If there are any provocations from Georgia, our reaction will be strong."
A top Georgian official pledged on Sunday to maintain the government's drive to resolve the South Ossetian stand-off. "The elections cannot be legitimate because... the whole world does not recognise them," Goga Khaindrava, the minister in charge of relations with the breakaway regions, said. "Talks with the de facto authorities in Tskhinvali to regulate the Georgian-Ossetian conflict will continue."
Many Georgians say some officials in Moscow tacitly back the South Ossetian independence drive and at least one Russian member of parliament was observing the elections. Analysts said the pro-Russia 'Yedinstvo' (Unity in Russian) party would win. Huge portraits of Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tskhinvali's biggest buildings underlined its policy with the slogan "Putin is our president". Most voters in the capital supported the party: "I voted for Yedinstvo because I want us to be part of Russia. I hope this party will do all it can to achieve that," said Ella, 56. But their wishes are unlikely to be fulfilled. Putin considers the region to be part of Georgia, and the region's ethnic Georgians -- as much as a third of the 70,000 population according to some estimates -- are fiercely pro-Saakashvili. "We are part of Georgia. Tell our president to come and visit us," said Liana Zurabishvili in the ethnic Georgian village of Eredvi, which hosted no polling stations and sported no campaign posters. "Their president is not our president and never will be. Their elections are not elections for us," added neighbour Amiran Beruashvili. |
