Rebel South Ossetia votes for new leader

The breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia went to the polls Sunday to elect a new leader for the first time since Russia recognised its independence after Moscow's 2008 war with Tbilisi. A wide array of 11 candidates, ranging from a cabinet minister to the boss of a bread factory, are vying to become the president of the self-declared statelet of just 70,000 people in the Caucasus mountains. Whoever succeeds Eduard Kokoity -- the former wrestling champion who has dominated South Ossetia for a decade -- will be seen as illegitimate by most of the world as its independence is recognised only by Russia and a handful of far-flung states. Meanwhile Dzhambolat Tedeyev -- the main opposition figure in South Ossetia and the trainer of the Russian freestyle wrestling team -- was controversially barred from running on the grounds he had been absent from the region too long. The nominal favourite is the current minister of emergency situations Anatoly Bibilov, whose candidacy is openly backed by the Kremlin. Moscow has also supported Kokoity, who is not allowed to stand for another term. Polls opened at 0400 GMT and are due to close at 1600 GMT with initial results expected in the evening. Turnout in the first three hours of voting was just over seven percent, the head of the election commission Bella Pliyeva said. An AFP correspondent in the main town Tskhinvali said the early voting had gone peacefully although polling stations remained quiet with most voters expected in the afternoon. However, moving about Tskhinvali even on foot was difficult due to a heavy snowfall that had not been cleared -- and the failure of the authorities to clean up the ramshackle rebel capital is a major election issue. The outcome of the election, which will go to a second round if there is no overall winner in the first, remains in doubt with several other candidates in with a chance of overcoming Bibilov. These include the leader of the social democratic party Dmitry Tasoyev, information minister Georgy Kabisov, bread factory chief Vadim Tskhovrebov and former education minister Alla Dzhioyeva. The bitter campaign was out of all proportion to South Ossetia's tiny size. One presidential hopeful, Alan Kochiyev, is spending election day in jail after being charged with beating up a deputy. "The election campaign has been waged with a lot of black PR, especially on the Internet," Bibilov said ahead of the vote. Whoever wins will inherit a litany of problems besides the lack of recognition for South Ossetia. Observers say that much of the funding provided by Moscow to rebuild South Ossetia after the 2008 war was siphoned off by corrupt officials, and Tskhinvali has still not been fully rebuilt after the damage sustained in the conflict. Tbilisi lost control of South Ossetia in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union and failed to retake control over the region in the 2008 war with Russia when most of the remaining ethnic Georgian population was driven out. Moscow subsequently recognised South Ossetia and another Georgian rebel region, Abkhazia, as independent. Russia has built military bases and stationed thousands of troops in South Ossetia. Georgian Reintegration Minister Eka Tkeshelashvili has slammed the elections as illegitimate polls "held in an non-existent state by a regime established through ethnic cleansing." A major campaign issue has been whether South Ossetia should become a part of Russia and unite with the neighbouring Russian region of North Ossetia -- an the idea Bibilov has described as a "dream that we cannot give up". North Ossetia is the home of most of the world's Ossetians, a mainly Orthodox Christian people who speak a language distantly related to Persian.