Come December 10, protesters in the discombobulated Caucasus region of South Ossetia plan to inaugurate their leader, Alla Jioyeva, as the territory's new de facto president with or without the consent of the current de facto president, longtime strongman Eduard Kokoity.
Russia’s efforts to defuse South Ossetia's political crisis -- now a week-old -- appear to be not heading toward breakthrough.
The protesters insist they already have a president so both Kokoity and the pick for his successor, de facto Emergency Situations Minister Anatoliy Bibolev, as well as their backers in the Kremlin, need to get used to it.
Despite any disillusionment with Moscow, though, Jioyeva’s supporters still hope that the Kremlin will help the tiny region step back from civil unrest. To prove that the protests are not anti-Moscow, the Jioyeva camp called on demonstrators to back Russia's ruling United Russia party in its December 4 parliamentary elections. (Most South Ossetians hold Russian passports.)
Still, the demonstrators are trying to put their eggs in other baskets, too. On December 4, they also asked that the United Nations and European Parliament help avert a political crisis in South Ossetia that may destabilize the wider region.
But, aside from Nicaragua, Venezuela, Nauru and Tuvalu, the international community tends to agree with Tbilisi's view that South Ossetia is Georgian territory -- a view certainly not shared by any of the political combatants in the current drama. That means, for now, the field is still open to Moscow.
Giorgi Lomsadze is a journalist based in Tbilisi, and author of Tamada Tales.
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