Few Candidates Visit Georgia's IDP Settlements

More than 30,000 Georgians were displaced by the August 2008 conflict over South Ossetia. Approximately two-thirds have been resettled into 36 new villages or apartment buildings, known as IDP (internally displaced person) settlements.

Residents claim that very few candidates have campaigned in the settlements. “No one comes. Not from the government or from the opposition,” said Spiridon Romelishvili, a middle aged IDP originally from Tskhinvali, adding that everything he knows about the May 30 election he has learned from television. “If they had come, of course I would have wanted to talk with them. But no one is interested in us, in the situation here.”