Saakayan, who had previously served as head of the republic's national security service, scored a landslide victory with 85.4% of the vote. He was followed by Deputy Foreign Minister Masis Mailyan, who garnered 12.2%.
The former security chief faced no serious rivals and will succeed lame-duck President Arkady Gukasyan, who declined to run for a third term and will step down this August.
The elections in Nagorno-Karabakh, which closely resemble those in Abkhazia and Kosovo, highlight the republic's political continuity and made clear that the candidates did not use their influence or connections to government institutions to achieve victory.
The international community and Azerbaijan, which lost control over Nagorno-Karabakh in 1992, condemned the elections and called them illegal. However, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and Azerbaijan will have no choice but to cooperate with President-elect Saakyan. The governments of Serbia and Georgia, as well as international organizations, are also forced to deal with the officially unrecognized leaders of Kosovo and Abkhazia.
Consequently, elections in self-proclaimed territories highlight a worldwide legal conundrum and imply that different peace plans, including the one advocated by former Finnish President and UN Special Envoy for Kosovo Martti Ahtissari, cannot solve the problem.
Moreover, there are no other long-term alternatives because the people of Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia and Kosovo do not want to be reintegrated into, respectively, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Serbia. Nagorno-Karabakh has no need to modify its policies because it does not have to become part of Armenia and because it is not officially involved in peace talks with Baku.
Although these tiny, self-proclaimed "garrison" states, which are just starting out in this world, have a small population and a rudimentary economy, they can eventually convert their local form of democracy into the ordinary, grass-roots kind. The only alternative would be chaos.
Unlike elections in other parts of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Nagorno-Karabakh elections produced no surprises and were not marred by any serious allegations of fraud. This fact was itself a surprise to those who have always viewed Nagorno-Karabakh as an unstable enclave.
Although the latest elections have nothing to do with independence or international recognition, they prove that Nagorno-Karabakh, which does not believe that the Ahtisaari plan will set a global precedent, is a viable, albeit weak, state.
Vadim Dubnov is an independent political commentator.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
