TSKHINVALI: A court in Georgia's Moscow-backed breakaway region of South Ossetia has thrown out the results of a vote for president and ordered a new election in March, after ruling on Tuesday that one of two run-off candidates committed foul play.
Preliminary results showed former education minister Alla Dzhioyeva, 62, won Sunday's vote but she was then accused by her rival, the region's emergencies minister Anatoly Bibilov, 41, of electoral violations.
The winner would become South Ossetia's first new president since Russia recognised the tiny sliver of land as independent after Moscow's brief 2008 war with Georgia.
Though both candidates share pro-Kremlin sympathies and an anti-Georgian stance, Dzhioyeva's supporters say Bibilov was put in place directly by Moscow, claims he has dismissed.
The regional parliament said it had set the new elections for March 25 with the Court urging Dzhioyeva to not participate, infuriating hundreds of her supporters who rallied outside her headquarters in the regional capital Tskhinvali.
"There were certainly no violations on Dzhioyeva's side. This was all made up," said Soslan Dzhioyev, a worker at her headquarters who said he is not related to Dzhioyeva despite sharing a surname. "We have a very tense situation. It can flare up at any moment," he told Reuters.
Outside her headquarters, around 500 people gathered to show support, lighting fires in metal barrels to keep warm under the snow.
The winner will replace Eduard Kokoity, a former wrestling champion whose second term expires at the end of this month.
Venezuela, Nicaragua, and the Pacific nation of Nauru have also recognised South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two breakaway Georgian regions that have governed themselves with Russian backing since separatist wars after the 1991 Soviet collapse.
Other countries consider the regions part of Georgia, which has dismissed the South Ossetian election as illegitimate.
But while Bibilov has said South Ossetia should become part of Russia by unifying with North Ossetia, a Russian province across the border whose population is mostly ethnic Ossetian, Dzhioyeva says South Ossetia should be independent.
Dzhioyeva's supporters and experts point to a meeting between Bibilov and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev earlier this month as proof that Moscow is openly backing one of the two candidates.
The elections' outcome is unlikely to alter South Ossetia's dependence on Russia as an economic lifeline and military protector of the landlocked region with a population of about 30,000.
"By voting for Dzhioyeva, people are protesting how the president of South Ossetia can be appointed from Moscow," said Grigory Shvedov, editor of the Caucasian Knot news agency.
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