Op-ed: last chance to reconcile authorities and opposition in Abkhazia
Political crisis in Abkhazia
Today, there is a chance to resolve the political crisis in Abkhazia, as both authorities and the opposition express their readiness to sign a memorandum on the mutual renunciation of forceful actions. Editor of JAMnews Abkhazia, Inal Khashig, discusses how the parties were able to come to such a decision and what it could lead to.
In Abkhazia, another surge of the protracted internal political crisis that fell on the New Year holidays, seems to have subsided under the pressure of forces not involved in the conflict. The parties are ready to compromise.
The authorities and the opposition, through the mediation of the Public Chamber, sat down at the negotiating table, and demonstrated their intention to “bury the hatchet”.
First, veterans’ organizations (the pro-presidential “Amtsakhara” and the opposition “Aruaa”) agreed on a peaceful outcome. Then the United Abkhazia party, led by Security Council Secretary Sergei Shamba, and the the Forum of National Unity founded by former President Raul Khadjimba, did the same.
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Proceeding from the emerging trend, the next step will be the signing by all political forces of a special Memorandum fixing the new ‘rules of the game’.
The main goal of the document is to put an end to the series of violent acts of change of power, of which there have been plenty in the modern history of Abkhazia, and to continue the further political process virtually from a “clean slate”.
Naturally, one of the conditions for these agreements will be a de facto amnesty for five opposition activists who were arrested for participating in mass riots on December 21 last year – an opposition rally that turned into another attempt to storm the presidential palace.
Without this clause, the opposition is unlikely to agree to sign anything. However, the authorities do not particularly insist on bringing the criminal case on “mass riots” to its logical end – a trial and real prison sentences for violators – from a sense of self-preservation. There is an intuitive understanding that such adherence to principles can eventually go sideways, both for the current government itself and for its individual representatives.
Principle in this matter will indeed not give any special dividends to President Aslan Bzhania. If the opposition lets such repressive measures pass, then only for a short time, after which it will become even more radical in its attitude towards the current government, and then further attempts to remove the president by force cannot be avoided.
Even if these attempts are not crowned with success, sooner or later, according to the established political tradition, these two warring camps will change places, and then satisfaction will surely come.
President Bzhania certainly understands that his opponents, in such a scenario, can become more vindictive than he currently is and put behind bars not ordinary “foot soldiers”, as it happened now, but his “generals”. Given the current justice system, they won’t even have to search hard for a good reason to do so. As comrade Stalin said, “if there is a man, there is an article to charge them with”.
On the other hand, the opposition itself is interested in reaching an agreement with the authorities, even without taking into account the situation with the arrested comrades-in-arms. Despite the dissatisfaction of the citizens of Abkhazia with their current socio-economic situation, society is tired of all these upheavals – the storming of the presidential palace and the forceful seizure of power – and the events of December 21 last year, when there were no more than a few hundred protesters, although there are many times more dissatisfied in the country.
In general, the Memorandum is inevitable.
However, this does not mean that this document guarantees stability. In reality, it can only become a basis for constructive cooperation between the authorities and the opposition in resolving the problems facing the country and full-scale reforms.
If the parties, and first of all the authorities, as a more responsible player in this field, perceive the agreements as a usual situational maneuver, and continue to compete in which of these groups ruled Abkhazia worse, then a new larger crisis that could put an end to the very idea Abkhazian statehood cannot be avoided.
