MOSCOW, 4 October 2003 — Even before the Kremlin called, Malik Saidullayev got the message. As a candidate for president of Chechnya, Saidullayev had seen his campaign workers harassed, attacked, even kidnapped. Someone, he concluded, did not want him to stay in the race.
Then a top aide to President Vladimir Putin summoned him to the Kremlin. “He suggested I withdraw,’’ Saidullayev recalled. He refused. More meetings followed, along with offers and threats, Saidullayev said, but he stood firm. Then a court complaint was filed against him, and within 48 hours, his name was struck from the ballot.
Saidullayev’s story, according to analysts and human rights groups, shows how an election that was supposed to propel Chechnya along the road to what Putin calls “normalization’’ has instead turned into a one-sided affair that almost certainly will confirm the rule of Kremlin-appointed administrator Akhmad Kadyrov. Violence, pressure and the strategic use of a compliant court system, they say, have sidelined the strongest three challengers to Kadyrov, making tomorrow’s vote more coronation than competition.
The manipulation of the election has undermined its legitimacy abroad before the first vote is cast. The Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have declined to send election observers. And a senior official at the US State Department last month questioned the credibility of the election.
“It’s a farce,’’ said Tatyana Lokshina, of the Moscow Helsinki Group, which monitors human rights abuses in Chechnya. “It’s just a show, a presidential show.’’
“Everyone understands that this is not an election,’’ said Alexei Malashenko, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center. “I was shocked by the (candidate) eliminations. It proves that in the Kremlin — Putin himself, perhaps — they are afraid of the possibility that Kadyrov would not win.’’
Putin ordered the election as part of a multi-step political process to declare an end to the long-running war in Chechnya. In an interview last month, he said that any of the candidates would have been acceptable to him, but he made clear his preference for Kadyrov, calling him “an open, decent and honest person’’ — the same words he used to describe President Bush. Kadyrov, Putin said, “truly wants to normalize the situation in Chechnya.’’ Asked about Kadyrov’s challengers disappearing from the race one after the other, Putin dismissed it as standard practice. “This is more an issue of pre-election tactics,’’ he said. “There is no violation of any legislation, democracy, nothing like this. But this is a matter of tactics employed in the pre-election campaign.’’
Those tactics appear to have saved the widely hated Kadyrov, who according to polls would have lost a free election against his original opponents. A Muslim cleric and former rebel, Kadyrov switched sides in 2000 when the Kremlin installed him as its viceroy in Chechnya. In recent times, he has assembled what critics call the “Kadyrov Guard’’ of about 3,000 armed fighters, who have become more feared even than Russian troops and accused by Chechens and human rights groups of torture, murder and abductions. Hoping to end his rule, a host of prominent Chechens stepped forward this summer to take on Kadyrov. A recent survey by the Public Opinion Foundation found that 61.5 percent of Chechens polled would not vote for Kadyrov under any circumstances.
The leader in that poll was Chechen businessman Malik Saidullayev, with 23 percent to Kadyrov’s 13 percent. Saidullayev, who turns 39 tomorrow, made a fortune in Moscow, where he runs the Russian Lotto game and owns an English pub called the Horse and Hound, but has said he wanted to return home to bring peace. “There’s a war with the Chechen people going on in order to destroy the people,’’ he said in an interview. “I wanted to stop this by any means.’’
But the Kremlin was working to shore up support for its candidate. It pressured Chechen refugees in neighboring Ingushetia to return home in time for the election, offering them money to resettle before the election day. It allowed 30,000 Russian troops in Chechnya to vote in the election. And it helped organize a rump “impeachment’’ of rebel Aslan Maskhadov, Chechnya’s last elected president, clearing the position for Kadyrov.
