The Institute for War and Peace Reporting have a report from Karabagh on the elections there.

Originally, there were ten candidates, but the field has now narrowed to five, after two were denied registration and three pulled out. Most observers are agreed that the ballot comes down to a fight between two men, Pavel Najarian, a former deputy mayor of Stepanakert, and Eduard Agabekian, chairman of the committee on social issues in the Karabakh parliament.

Najarian was one of the participants in the 1988 movement for secession from Azerbaijan and has a reputation of being an experienced business professional, having managed the local buildings material plant, one of the most successful factories in Karabakh in recent times.

The article raises the same questions that affect the RA. A legal vacuum that “not only makes possible pressure from above but various kinds of bureaucratic arbitrary rule with all its accompanying side-effects: corruption, protectionism and so on”.