The Winner Takes the Toll
The Price of the Question
An early presidential election is Mikhail Saakashvili’s victory and defeat at the same time. It is a victory because he is most likely to win on a landslide. It is a defeat because the victory will be Pyrrhic. The president’s approval rating and his authority in Georgia and abroad are going down, and it is hardly possible to break this downward trend.
The early election was the least evil that President Saakashvili chose consciously. He had no way to “listen” to the West’s stance other than lift the emergency rule and show willingness to negotiate with the opposition. There was no other way to stop the escalation of the conflict with the Georgian elite annoyed with his authoritarian governing style and the society hurt by the dispersal of an opposition rally.
Saakashvili had to give up the main thing in the conflict with the opposition. He reversed his initial plan to hold the presidential and parliamentary election on the same day as he lost an opportunity to electioneer for his party in this double campaign. The president-party list leader is a specifically Russia political technology which cannot be imported. But the Georgian opposition would not be able to get a good spin before the presidential poll. Quite on the contrary, Saakashvili’s win would help his party position itself as the party in power in contrast to several groups of his rivals. Any Bachelor of Political Technology knows about this mutual influence of different elections, so there is no genius hidden in it.
But still there has been a trade-off, and the opposition is going to make the most of it. The fact that ratings are low for opposition candidates and Saakashvili alike proves that the society is at a loss. It is distrustful or even averted to politicians. This is quite a natural reaction to unrest, violence and emergency rule that Georgia saw in the past months. It is bad news for the opposition but it is catastrophic news for the president. The opposition is already trying to use as it is pulling out the chair from him demanding that the presidency is abolished. The method is no new. They “pulled out the country” from Gorbachev. This is the way Gennady Zyuganov was campaigning in 1996 as he knew that he would not beat the president if he did not delegitimize the post itself.
The process is already on in Georgia. President Bush’s message on the lifting of the emergency rule was sent not to Saakashvili but to the prime minister. Therefore the opposition may claim that the West does not stake on the incumbent leader. Failures in restoring the country’s territorial integrity will allow the opposition to undermine trust in Saakashvili as the national leader if it takes a “patriotic” stance which will, unfortunately, be averse to Russia. The election campaign has begun as the state of emergency has just been lifted and not all opposition media have gone back on air or to print, which will give the Georgian opposition a favorable eye from international observers.
As an asset the Georgian president has got the whole tool kit of administrative resources, a vivid personality, unrest in the country and the absence of strong leaders. He is most likely to win the early presidential battle. But it does not secure him a victory in a war against opposition which looks to become protracted.
Boris Makarenko, first deputy director of the Center for Political Technologies
All the Article in Russian as of Nov. 23, 2007
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