SUKHUM, July 25 (Itar-Tass) — Abkhazia’s Central Election Commission has registered presidential and vice-presidential candidacies in compliance with Article 8 of the law on presidential elections.
The CEC registered the following candidacies: Raul Khadzhimba and Svetlana Dzhergeniya, Alexander Ankvab and Mikhail Logua, and Sergei Shamba and Shamil Adzynba.
Within days the CEC will give corresponding certificates to all candidacies. According to CEC head Batal Tabagua, there had no remarks to documents, which had been submitted by the initiative groups and the Forum of People’s Unity party.
Under Abkhazia’s legislation, Sergei Shamba and Alexander Ankvab should leave soon. Parliament speaker Nugzar Ashuba will perform the duties.
Early presidential elections will take place on August 26 due to the death of Sergei Bagapsh. Bagapsh had a right lung surgery at the 83rd clinical hospital of the Federal Medical and Biological Agency on May 21, and the doctors said the operation was successful. Yet the condition of Bagapsh seriously exacerbated in the recent days and he was connected to an artificial lung ventilation system. The doctors failed to bring Bagapsh out of a coma.
According to earlier reports, Ankvab, Khadzhimba and Shamba successfully passed the Abkhazian language proficiency examination.
In compliance with the constitutional law on presidential elections of Abkhazia, presidential candidacies should take the Abkhazian language proficiency examination. The examination has been conducted by the six-people-member linguistic commission led by EdD Alexei Kaslandziya. Each candidacy read a text in the Abkhazian language and retold it, and answered numerous questions.
“If a candidacy can excellently read a text and retell it, freely speak and answer any questions, it will be enough to assess the knowledge,” he said.
Commenting on the necessity of such examination, Kaslandziya said, “I’m absolutely convinced in it.”
The presidential candidacies share his point of view.
Earlier this month, Abkhazia’s Central Election Commission registered a political party, “Forum for People’ s Unity of Abkhazia”.
On July 2, the party’s Political Council took a decision to support the nomination of Khadzhimba for presidency and Dzhergeniya for vice-presidency.
On June 28, the Central Election Commission registered the initiative group, which nominated Khadzhimba for presidency. He was Abkhazia’s vice-president from 2005 to 2009.
Dzhergeniya is a widow of the republic’s first president, chairwoman of its fund and senior research assistant of the department for political science and conflict resolution of the Abkhazian Institute for Humanitarian Studies.