Three Local Candidates in Ingushetia Join Election Boycott

Paul Goble

            Staunton, August 31 – Three candidate for the Sunzhe district council in Ingushetia from the Russian Pensioners Party have announced that they are joining the boycott of the September 8 elections that three groups have called for (https://fortanga.org/2019/08/tri-kandidata-v-deputaty-prisoedinilis-k-bojkotu-v-munitsipalnyh-vyborov-v-ingushetii/).

            They are among the 104 candidates who are counted as self-nominated because they are not from one of the four parliamentary (“systemic”) parties. (Those four have 794 people in the running.)  The 898 are competing for 456 places on councils in 39 of the 40 municipalities of that North Caucasus republic. 

            Meanwhile, Makhmud-Ali Kalimatov, the acting head of the republic who is expected to be confirmed by the Popular Assembly also on September 8, has announced an online competition to identify young peple to serve in regional offices of the Ingush government (ingushetia.ru/news/m_kalimatov_obyavil_o_starte_v_ingushetii_konkursa_upravlencheskikh_kadrov_/).

            Part of what Kalimatov calls “Ingushetia on the Path to Renewal,” the program has a website where those who want to take part can register (konkurs.ingushetia.ru/). Those who do will be screened and the winners interviewed for positions that may become available.  The results are to be announced September 22.

            Also today there were two echoes of the war in the early 1990s between Ingushetia and North Оssetia, attention to MIAs from that war (fortanga.org/2019/08/mezhdunarodnyj-den-zhertv-nasilstvennyh-ischeznovenij/) and a new controversy over a blogger’s film suggesting that part of what is now North Оssetia should be part of Ingushetia (zamanho.com/?p=12104).