GROZNY, Oct 5: The people of war-shattered Chechnya voted on Sunday for a new president in a widely discredited poll that few believed was likely to bring peace to Russia’s troubled southern republic.

As ballot counting began, Kremlin-backed candidate Akhmad Kadyrov charged ahead with over two-thirds of the vote, bagging up to 80 per cent in the most populated areas such as Grozny and second-largest city Gudermes, an electoral commission source was quoted by the ITAR-TASS news agency as saying. Despite widespread reports of near-empty polling stations, election officials said turnout was over 80 percent in the poll in which Kadyrov faced no serious rivals.

And despite predictions that the election would do little to bring peace to the republic, Kadyrov Sunday reaffirmed his refusal to hold talks with rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov, the last legally elected president of Chechnya, and predicted that rebel supporters would “switch sides in two or three weeks or a month.”

The poll, which took place amid a high security presence, came almost exactly four years after 80,000 Russian troops poured into the Caucasus republic in what Moscow called a lightning-strike “anti-terror operation” to put down a separatist insurgency.

The conflict has since degenerated into a brutal guerrilla war, but the Kremlin is presenting the poll as evidence that it has won the military phase of the conflict and that normality is returning to Chechnya.

Kadyrov, whom opinion polls have shown to be widely unpopular in his native republic, said he would ask the Russian parliament to approve a new amnesty for rebels who lay down their weapons, although a previous amnesty that ended on September 1 was taken up by few rebels.

Chechnya’s estimated 560,000 registered voters had a choice of seven candidates, but two of Kadyrov’s main rivals withdrew during the campaign and a third, Malik Saidullayev, a wealthy businessman and former prime minister, was disqualified because of alleged irregularities.

Critics have also contested the poll’s legitimacy on the grounds that it took place in the midst of a war and that it was massively skewed in favour of Kadyrov.

Chechen election officials said at 7 pm one hour before polling closed, that turnout exceeded 80 per cent.—AFP