Controversy Persists over Abkhazia Election Results

The Abkhazian Central Election Commission (CEC) has surprisingly announced that all previous reports that went through the newswires regarding the preliminary results of the October 3 presidential elections are not valid. The chief of the Abkhaz CEC Sergey Smir told reporters in Sokhumi that the early results of the polls will be known only by the evening of October 4.

The information over the election results, which gave victory to Raul Khajimba with 53% of the votes, was reportedly direct from Abkhaz electoral officials. Moreover, a web-site of the Abkhaz Central Election Commission, once thought official but recently denounced by Abkhazian CEC, even posted a graph of data showing the distribution of votes early on October 4. But this graph was removed later on the same day. The CEC even reported that it never had a web-site at all.

The controversy over the election results reporting follows the protest by opposition candidate Sergey Bagapsh, who, according to the early official results, received only 33.5% of votes.

Reports say that the opposition condemned the election results as rigged and demanded a recount of the votes.