Ingush Taking Part in Elections Risks Losing Their Reputations for All Time, Dzagiyev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, September 1 – The boycott of next Sunday’s municipal elections in Ingushetia is the logical next step in the political struggle the people in Ingushetia have been engaged in for more than a year against a regime that has shown its fundamental bankruptcy by its failure to obey the law and its use of repression, Mustafa Dzagiyev says.

            The crisis began because former republic head Yunus-Bek Yevkurov violated the law and the constitution by his shameful and covert deal with Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and then compounded these actions by persecuting and arresting those who protested what he had done, the Ingush blogger continues (6portal.ru/posts/бойкот-выборов-логичное-следствие-по/).

            With opposition leaders in jail, opposition candidates blocked from running, and those on the ballot having been selected by Yevkurov and his gang, all honest Ingush have no choice but to avoid having anything to do with this “farce” and to show their solidarity with opposition leaders now behind bars.

            Those who do take part, Dzagiyev says, put themselves at risk of losing their reputations for all time.

            Another perspective on the situation in Ingushetia in advance of September 8 is provided by Beyal Yevloyev, a senior member of the Popular Assembly who was in attendance when Makhmud-Ali Kalimatov, the acting republic head, appeared before the legislators on Friday (fortanga.org/2019/09/bejal-evloev-narod-rasschityvaet-na-novogo-glavu-ingushetii/).

            Kalimatov’s candidacy for a full term as republic head is slated to be voted on by the Popular Assembly on the same day as the municipal elections. While he faces two opponents, neither is expected to gain many votes and Kalimatov, who was named to the position by Vladimir Putin is almost certain to win easily.

            Yevloyev said he was personally impressed by Kalimatov’s responses to the deputies’ questions, but he indicated that problems the acting republic head has pledged to address will “not influence the situation in the republic” the way “the illegal agreement on the border with Chechnya, the of the border with North Ossetia, and the problem of the Prigorodny district” do.

            Unless Kalimatov finds a way to deal in a positive way with these issues, Yevloyev says, anything he achieves on other questions will matter far less than he and his backers in Moscow imagine.