5th convocation of the People's Assembly of Abkhazia

The 5th convocation of the People's Assembly of Abkhazia has been in place since 3 April 2012.

The first round of the election in constituency no. 1 was declared invalid because the turnout had failed to surpass the threshold of 25%. On 19 March the Central Election Commission announced that the rerun would be held on 6 May. The rerun was won with 1932 out of 3413 votes (56.61%) by businessman Beslan Eshba, who had not participated in the original election. On 10 May, Eshba was registered as deputy by the Central Election Commission.

On 29 March, the Supreme Court of Abkhazia invalidated the election in constituency no. 21 and ordered a rerun. The original count had given Aida Ashuba a slim first round majority of 401 votes out of 795 (50.44%), but after a complaint by the campaign team of runner up Valeri Kvarchia, the election commission of precinct 1 held a recount. In the recount, 46 more ballots were found to be invalid, causing Ashuba's vote share to fall below 50% and making a second round run-off between Ashuba and Kvarchia necessary. Ashuba then issued a complaint with the Central Election Commission as his observers had not been present during the recount. The Central Election Commission agreed with the complaint and requested the precinct and constituency election commissions to uphold the original count. When the local election commission refused to comply, the Central Election Commission brought the matter to the Supreme Court.

Neither Ashuba nor Kvarchia managed to gain enough votes to win an outright majoriy in the first round of the repeat election on 20 May. In the run-off on 4 June, Kvarchia defeated Ashuba with 679 votes against 623.

On 25 May 2012, only two months after the election, Temur Logua, Deputy for constituency no. 26 in Chlou, was found dead in his apartment in Moscow. The by-election was set for 22 July, with the nomination period running from 2 to 22 June and the registration period from 22 June to 12 July.

On 4 June, an initiative group nominated Beslan Tarba. On 7 June, the Forum for the National Unity of Abkhazia held an extraordinary congress and unanimously nominated Appollon Shinkuba. On 12 June, Chairman of the Party for the Economic Development of Abkhazia Beslan Butba was nominated by an initiative group. All three were successfully registered.

In the first round, on 22 July, no candidate received an absolute majority. Out of 2804 registered voters, 2040 turned out to vote. Of the votes cast, 32 were deemed invalid, Beslan Butba received 920 votes, Beslan Tarba 647 and Appolon Tarba 441. The second round, held on 5 August, was won by Butba with 1125 votes over 1026 for Tarba and 42 invalid votes. 2193 out of a total 2841 registered voters participated in the second round.

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Wikipedia