| Caucasus Times 20 August 2003 Election fraud reported in collection of support signatures While the teams of activists are collecting voters signatures for candidates to be admitted to the presidential elections in Chechnya watchdogs report massive abuses, fraud and faked signatures. On August 15, Kadyrov's security agents carried out "collecting signatures campaign" for support of their boss on the central market of Groznyy. The agents collected passports of vendors, mainly women, trading on the market and brought them back after a while. The documents were taken to have passport data to forge voters signatures. The owners of passports perfectly knew about the fraud but preferred not to ask for troubles and be cooperative. "They just warned us that we should vote for Kadyrov," says Madina, a 32-year-old local woman who has her small business on the market of Groznyy. "If I had refused to give them my passport, I would sure have had lots of troubles. They just gave us a hint, putting it short: "Want to trade here? Then shut up and cough your passports up!" I couldn't argue. I'm feeding all my family, you know". An activist of Malik Saidulayev's election team also confirmed the election abuses and fraud committed by Akhmad Kadyrov's loyalists."Noteworthy is a practice that became common in large cities and inhabited centers. If a man, wants to work for Kadyrov's election headquarters he would come and get a whole bundle of the documents with the initial data of voters, which are available in each district office. It can be the lists of the pensioners, those who receive benefits for children or disabled persons, businessmen registration certificates, that is any document, which contains data of any individual, a registered voter, who knows nothing about it at all." After all is said and done, the volunteer of Kadyrov's team has only to put all voter's data in the list meant in favor of Kadyrov candidacy and to forge a signature. "Then "the collector of signatures" would bring the completed forms back to Kadyrov's election headquarters to be paid out. As far as we know, the payment could be something about 1.000 rubles for 70 filled forms," says Saidulayev's activist. The Kadyrov's election headquarters representatives swept aside those charges calling it a political intrigue. "Actually, it is no trouble for our candidate to collect 5 or 10 signatures required. He does not need to resort to such fraudulent tricks. Akhmad-hajji-Kadyrov has won the respect of overwhelming majority of the populace. As to those gossips and conjectures, they are inevitable in election campaigns" said a member of Kadyrov's election team headquarters. Ruslan Adayev, Chechnya Caucasus Times |