Citizens hope votes will lead to stability

The war-torn area suffers from high unemployment and widespread violence.
GROZNY, Russia (AP) -- Chechens voted Sunday in their first parliamentary elections since Russia sent troops back to the Caucasus region six years ago to crush a separatist insurgency.
Moscow has touted the vote as the latest step toward restoring normalcy in the violence-wracked southern republic, but critics fear the new parliament will amount to a rubber stamp for the Chechnya's Kremlin-backed governing elites.
Few international observers were monitoring the election for flaws that have marred three previous votes.
Some 24,000 troops and police guarded 430 polling stations, with more patrolling most crossroads in western Chechnya and in the capital of Grozny.
Many of the republic's 600,000 voters said they hoped the new parliament would cement stability in a region plagued by widespread unemployment, a shattered infrastructure and lingering violence between separatist rebels and Russian forces.
"We're voting so that none of this ever happens again," said 52-year-old Bella as she waited at a Grozny bus stop with her 6-year-old granddaughter. She declined to give her last name out of fear for her safety.
Fears of tainted results
There were 350 candidates vying for 58 seats in the two-chamber parliament, with most of Russia's main national political parties fielding contenders.
Rights activists fear the assembly will be packed with supporters of Deputy Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov, the son of late President Akhmad Kadyrov, who was assassinated in a May 2004 bombing. Ramzan Kadyrov, 29, controls a feared security force accused of abuses ranging from robberies to kidnappings, and he holds vast business interests in Chechnya's oil industry.
Electoral authorities said preliminary turnout was 57 percent, the Ekho Moskvy radio reported. But the pro-separatist KavkazCenter Web site claimed turnout was dramatically lower -- between 5 percent and 7 percent -- and denounced the elections as a "farce." The Web site did not indicate how it arrived at its figure.
In Grozny, rows of blasted-out apartment blocks and piles of scrap and rubble serve as reminders of the heavy fighting that nearly razed the city of 1 million people in the early 1990s. In some areas, new, multistory buildings stand out with bright paint, modern exteriors and neat landscaping.
"We are sick of this," said Salambek Imolayev, a 45-year-old Grozny resident who earns $220 a month as a water delivery man and lives in a crumbling one-room apartment with his wife and three children. "The elections give us something."
An estimated 100,000 civilians, soldiers and rebels have died in two wars in Chechnya since federal troops first swept into the region in 1994 to crush its bid for independence.