South Ossetians Elect Parliment

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/01/world/europe/01ossetia.html?_r=1

MOSCOW — Voters in the breakaway territory of South Ossetia on Sunday elected a Parliament loyal to the Moscow-backed president, Eduard Kokoity, consolidating his control in the region that precipitated the war last August between Russia and Georgia.

South Ossetia’s new Parliament will be dominated by the Edinstvo, or Unity, Party, which won about 60 percent of the votes, based on an early count.

Critics complained that election officials had shut out Mr. Kokoity’s rivals, who blame him for the slow pace of reconstruction in the separatist capital.

On Sunday, officials reported a turnout of more than 56,000 voters.

South Ossetia’s prewar population was about 70,000.

Temuri Yakobashvili, Georgia’s minister of reintegration, called the results illegitimate.

“There are very few people left there,” he said. “Besides the fact that Georgians are not there, there are no ethnic Ossetians there. This is just an attempt to legitimize the Kokoity regime.”

The president’s opponents have suggested that he plans to change the Constitution so that he can run again after his second term ends, in 2011.