Georgia Ruling Party Cements Power
May 22, 2008
MOSCOW — As vote counts were being tallied on Thursday, the ruling party in Georgia had a commanding lead in the Parliamentary elections held the previous day, cementing President Mikheil Saakashvili and his party’s place as the nation’s preeminent political force.
With two thirds of the polling precincts reporting, Mr. Saakashvili’s United National Movement party’s had more than 62 percent of the vote, Levan Tarkhnishvili, the head of the central election commission, said by telephone. The ruling party’s main opponent, the United Opposition bloc, had slightly more than 14 percent.
The opposition complained of irregularities in both the campaign and the vote, and vowed to challenge the results.
International election monitors agreed that the elections, while improved over past years, were still far from perfect. In a statement, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said that observers had heard “numerous allegations of intimidation, some of which could be verified.”
The group further noted that the “distinction between state activities and the government party’s campaign was often blurred,” and that there were “significant procedural shortcomings” with the counting and tabulation of the vote.
But the wide margin suggested that Mr. Saakashvili, his reputation as a democrat and a reformer tarnished by a police crackdown against unarmed protestors and an opposition television station last November, would maintain his unchallenged hold on the country’s politics and course.
Mr. Tarkhnishvili said he hoped that the full preliminary results would be released during the night, and both the opposition and the ruling party were awaiting the report from the principal international election observation mission, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Even before the results and assessments were in, Mr. Saakashvili claimed victory, and said the support was larger than he had predicted.
“I didn’t expect to recover so well after the political crisis we had last year,” he said by telephone. “We wanted a new mandate for reforms, and it looks like we’ve got it.”
Three parties beside United National Movement appeared to pass the 5 percent threshold required to gain seats in Parliament. But even if the opposition parries were to form a coherent coalition, they appeared destined to lack the seats to be a counterweight to Mr. Saakashvili’s rule.
Mr. Saakashvili, a lawyer educated at Columbia University, came to power after a peaceful revolution overthrew the government of former President Eduard Shevardnadze in 2003.
He has been staunchly pro-Western, seeking access to the European Union and NATO and sending troops to the American-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The country’s once stagnant economy has partly revived during his years in power, although poverty and unemployment remain pervasive, especially in rural areas.
Mr. Saakashvili has also pushed his small nation in the Caucasus onto the global stage, as tensions with neighboring Russia have surged during his presidency.
The tensions are related in part to his effort to pull Russian-supported breakaway regions in Georgia back under federal control, but also because he has been a steady and vocal critic of both the Kremlin’s regional dominance and of the Soviet past.
There have been signs of disaffection at home, however, since his rise to the presidency in the role of revolutionary hero.
His opponents say that power has changed him, and that he has become arrogant and intolerant of dissent and rules the country through a small circle of insiders, some of whom are corrupt. Mr. Saakashvili’s Georgia, his critics say, lacks the balance of powers of a healthy democratic system, and is run by cliquish Caucasus rules.
Giorgi Targamadze, head of the opposition Christian-Democratic Movement of Georgia, a new political party, said that Parliamentary election suffered from ballot-stuffing for the government and the suppression of votes for the opposition.
“Unfortunately this election was in the same tradition as bad past elections,” he said. He said in some cases the misconduct “was not an election problem but a serious crime.”
The initial tallies suggested his party had received about 8.5 percent of the vote enough for seats in Parliament, but less than what Mr. Targamadze said was the 14 or 15 percent he expected based on surveys of voters leaving the polls.
A former news anchor at the Imedi-TV station, which was raided by the police during the crackdown last year and forced off the air, he called on the president to reach out to the opposition and include them in governing the country.
“Saakashvili must do something to restore the trust of political parties,” he said, suggesting that the ruling party’s landslide victory had in part been rigged.
Mr. Saakashvili, who has never hidden his disdain for the opposition, acknowledged a decline in his support since 2003, but suggested that the population saw him and his government as the most competent choice.
“People are basically ready to give my government another chance,” he said.
He added, however, that the days of his soaring approval ratings are past. “The support is lot less euphoric and much more sober,” he said.
The Parliamentary election had been framed by diplomats and analysts as an important test of whether Georgia’s ruling party and Mr. Saakashvili could restore their now checkered reputations after the crackdown in the fall, and after Mr. Saakashvili’s victory in snap presidential election earlier this year.
He received 52 percent of that vote narrowly topping the required 50 percent amid allegations that his party had rigged the small margin of victory to avoid a potentially damaging run-off.
Giga Bokeria, a deputy foreign minister and one of Mr. Saakashvili’s closest confidants, said by telephone that the ruling party believed the Parliamentary election would be a step toward rebuilding international support.
“It was, as I hoped, better than the last election,” he said. “I think anybody who has more or less been closely following Georgia has been reassured.”
www.nytimes.com/2008/05/23/world/europe/23georgia.html?ref=world
Source: NY Times; May 2008
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