Civil Society:
GEORGIA: OPPOSITION ALREADY CRYING FOUL ON ELECTION EVE
Molly Corso: 1/04/08

Ballots have yet to be cast in Georgia’s special presidential election, but opposition leaders are already girding for post-election protests, complaining that the voting will be rigged to enable Mikheil Saakashvili’s re-election.

During a news conference at his headquarters on January 4, United Public Movement (UPM) candidate Levan Gachechiladze insisted to Georgian and international journalists that the January 5 election “would not be fair.” Standing next to representatives from the UPM’s nine party alliance, he asked all Georgians to “go to the streets and vote,” and urged them to stand watch at their voting stations to make sure no ballot-box stuffing occurred.

According to Gachechiladze, there is already “much information” that the government is planning to rig the election. He did not go into specifics.

Matyas Eorsi, a rapporteur from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), told EurasiaNet that there are “adequate” conditions for a fair election on January 5, although there might be “shortcomings.”

“We believe the current situation provides an adequate basis for a good election which will enable the Georgian people to express their wish for their future. That is the most important,” he said. “There might be lots of shortcomings but … the next leadership, together with the international community, there is always room to correct those shortcomings in the future.”

Georgian Government officials have tried to dispel fears that the governing party, the United National Movement, will engage in violations to secure a victory for Saakashvili. In a live statement to the public on January 2, State Minister for Territorial Integrity-cum-Saakashvili spokesperson Davit Bakradze asked voters to leave the election monitoring to the professionals.

“I want to remind you [voters] that the opposition parties have six representatives in the election commissions. Moreover, there will be the representatives of each presidential candidate and both local and international observers [at the polling stations],” he said. The presence of “politically minded people” could cause “discomfort” for voters, he added.

On November 18 Saakashvili told the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and other international organizations to send “hundreds and, if necessary, thousands of observers” to monitor the election, seeking to prove the government’s commitment to holding a free-and-fair vote. There are currently 29 organizations, including the OSCE, registered to observe the balloting.

Opposition leaders, including Gachechiladze, have claimed that international monitoring organizations have a spotty record judging Georgian elections. “In 2003 … after the Rose Revolution, the OSCE resolution was that the election [2003 parliamentary election that caused the revolution] was fair,” he said. “The interim report of the OSCE was good in terms of the non-democratic situation in Georgia. But what we will see I don’t know.”

All presidential candidates – with the exception of media tycoon Badri Patarkatsishvili who remains out of the country – met with OSCE and PACE representatives on January 4 to discuss their concerns going into the election. [For background about Patarkatsishvili see the Eurasia Insight archive].

Opposition candidates claim the entire election campaign has been unfair. Thus, they contend, there is a good chance the election results will be “falsified.” Gachechiladze seemed to stake out a position in which he would automatically not accept any election result that didn’t declare him the winner.

“If these kinds of things [violations] will continue – and I am 100 percent certain they will continue – we cannot recognize that [the results]. If there will be free elections – and there is not one chance it will be free – we can recognize our loss,” Gachechiladze told journalists after his meeting with the international observers.

“We will fight according to our Georgian Constitution we will do everything. We will continue protest manifestations,” Gachechiladze continued.

The extent to which the general public is willing to back up the opposition party protest threats is uncertain. Massive protests organized by the UPM in November were forcibly broken up by riot police and Special Forces on November 7, setting off a chain of events that led to the calling of the early presidential vote. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. However, the last protest organized by Gachechiladze and his supporters, on December 29 in Tbilisi, drew just a few thousand.

Conservative candidate Davit Gamkrelidze – the leader of the New Rights Party, and a politician known for his aversion to protests and demonstrations – has adopted a stance that leaves room for maneuvering. He said his party was prepared to use “peaceful methods” to usurp an “illegal president,” if the elections were deemed to be rigged.

Gamkrelidze suggested that a benchmark for the fairness of the vote would be whether a second round of voting is necessary. According to Georgian law, if one candidate does not receive more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round, Georgians must return to the polls for a second round of voting within two weeks. “I can say today that Saakashvili does not have ratings to go over the 50 percent threshold,” he said. “If he decided to manipulate the results and [win] the first round, I think it will be quite difficult to accept and recognize these results.”

Editor’s Note: Molly Corso is a freelance journalist based in Tbilisi.