Anatoly Bibilov wins South Ossetia presidential elections in the first round

With 57.98 percent of the vote, the current speaker of South Ossetia’s parliament, Anatoly Bibilov, has won the presidential elections, according to official data. The incumbent president, Leonid Tibilov, has garnered 30 percent of the votes, while yet another candidate, a local KGB officer, Alan Gagloev has received 11 percent. The voter turnout at polling stations, which were opened in South Ossetia, North Ossetia, Moscow and Abkhazia was 81 percent.

Leonid Tibilov campaigned under the motto “Stability and Development”, whereas Anatoly Bibilov harshly criticized the government’s inefficiency. The voting process was accompanied by multiple scandals and mutual accusations of electoral violations.

The fact that even the recent meeting with the Russian president Vladimer Putin could not help Leonid Tibilov, has caught the election observers by surprise. Usually, this tends to be a weighty argument for the South Ossetian voters.

Simultaneously with the presidential elections, a referendum was held on the renaming of South Ossetia, where 78 percent of the voters decided in favor of the name change ‘South Ossetia – The State of Alania’.

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