SUKHUM - Abkhazian President Raul Khajimba said he will accept any outcome of the referendum on early presidential elections in the republic.
“There will be a referendum! And if our people make a decision about Khajimba’s resignation, I will accept it. But if that does not happen, I will fight again all negative points that exist in our country until the end. And no one could intimidate me,” the president said at a rally of his supporters in Sukhum on July 6.
Over this time the authorities did everything they could to ease social tensions, he said. “In fact, many – both the people standing here, and those who today are in the opposition – were expecting that the president still won’t sign the decree to conduct the referendum. Perhaps, that was right. But we went down the path that proved most right,” he said.
“The decision on the referendum was taken to unite our people and to create conditions for a decision on further powers of the head of state,” he said.
The referendum on early presidential elections is scheduled for July 10.
About 700 participants in an unsanctioned opposition rally near the Abkhaz State Philharmonic Society in Sukhum on July 5 adopted a resolution demanding that the date of a referendum on a vote of confidence in President Khajimba be postponed to the fall and declared that they would insist on Interior Minister Leonid Dzapshba’s dismissal because of “the deterioration of the crime situation and actions aimed at violating the people’s constitutional rights related to participation in a referendum.”
Later in the day, protesters attempted to storm the Interior Ministry. Some of them managed to break the outer gates and reach the square in front of the ministry’s building. To prevent the activists from entering the building, security forces deployed a fire engine, but there was no necessity to use it.
The rally was stopped after Abkhaz Vice President Vitaly Gabnia proclaimed the president’s decree on suspending Dzapshba during a prosecutorial inquiry into his actions.
Later a source in the presidential administration told Interfax that a car carrying supporters of president Khajimba had come under attack, as a result of which two people were injured.
