Post-Election, Opposition Candidate Claims Stolen Votes

With the clock ticking for finalization of Georgia's presidential election results, opposition coalition candidate Levan Gachechiladze and supporters have launched a fire-and-brimstone campaign to have tens of thousands of votes for Mikheil Saakashvili nullified and a second round of voting declared.

At an evening press conference on January 7, senior Gachechiladze ally Tina Khidasheli, a member of the Republican Party, alleged that some 100,000 votes from 17 precincts throughout Georgia had been taken from Gachechiladze and given to Saakashvili. Protocols signed by precinct commission members, including representatives of the Republican Party and other opposition parties, do not match protocols published by the Central Election Commission (CEC), she charged.

"We have falsified protocols. We have double protocols. We have protocols that our commission members took from the precinct