GEORGIA: Protests Rise Over Elections

By Kester Kenn Klomegah Reprint | | Print |

Kester Kenn Klomegah

MOSCOW, Jan 14 2008 (IPS) - Leading opposition candidate Levan Gachechiladze has accused the Georgian government of widespread fraud in the last presidential election after the Central Election Commission released the final results declaring Mikheil Saakashvikli winner and new president.

Several thousand Georgians supporting Gachechiladze continue to hold protest rallies in capital Tbilisi. Other opposition candidates have also questioned the fairness of the election. The nine parties in an opposition coalition say they will continue to demand a second round of voting. Parties outside the coalition are likely to join the demand.

The Labour Party headed by Shalva Natelashvili asked for a recount after it won less than 20 percent of the vote.

“The elections were falsified,” Georgia’s human rights commissioner Sozar Subari told local media. “Administrative resources were used to a great extent, and this must be rectified by the next election.”

But, he added, while past candidates gained runaway victories with 70 to 90 percent, the more reasonable result this time means that “the Georgian people are masters of their fate.” Saakashvili declared victory in this election with about 55 percent of the vote.

Notwithstanding accusations by opposition groups, Saakashvili, 41, has helped transform the former Soviet republic of 4.5 million into a growing economy with aspirations of joining the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). He wants the nation, bordering strategically the Black Sea, Turkey and Russia, to cultivate close ties with the U.S. and to decrease Russia’s influence.

Saakashvili says opposition representatives would be offered representation in the new cabinet to defuse the mounting political tension.

Not everyone is supporting opposition complaints. “I think that the opposition’s results are good, and they got what they earned. If Saakashvili is weakened, the opposition should be happy,” Alexander Rondeli, president of the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies, an organisation that tracks local politics, told IPS from Tbilisi.

“There were some discrepancies, but international observers considered the election fair and democratic. The opposition wants a second round to be set, and they have many complaints that have to be put under scrutiny.” He said the opposition had said even before election that if they lose, it would be due to fraud.

An election monitoring delegation from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) to Georgia said it had recorded “no obvious offences” during the poll.

“The early election for Georgian president on Jan. 5 was on the whole organised in conformity with national election legislation,” Nauryz Aidarov, head of the eight-nation mission and deputy chairman of the CIS executive committee said at a press briefing.

“Voting on the whole went on in a quiet atmosphere, though there were some faults, which mainly had to do with the organisation of a normal process of voting. Instances were recorded of low-standard compilation of voters’ lists, which, in the opinion of the CIS observation mission, means that some sections of the Georgian election code need revision.”

Saakashvili clearly has several defenders. “As I see here, the opposition had quite good access to media during the election campaign and even now,” Tamar Ghlonti, vice-president of the Guria Youth Resource Centre, a social and educational organisation that supports youth programmes in Tbilisi, told IPS.

The Georgian office of the Washington-based National Democratic Institute, a non-profit organisation working to strengthen and expand democracy worldwide, says the election was fundamentally in line with democratic principles, but there were flaws in the process.

“As Georgia moves towards parliamentary elections and beyond, we encourage political leaders to identify and pursue opportunities for constructive dialogue, adopt a more consultative attitude to the public between elections, and increase the transparency of decision making at all levels,” the institute said in its report on the elections.