A protester holds a poster with portraits of Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili (left) and Central Election Commission head Levan Tarkhnishvili as he stands at Parliament building in Tbilisi, February 7, 2008. The words on the poster read "Vote thieves."
Photo: Reuters
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Georgian Opposition Makes New Threats
The Georgian opposition is threatening to break off its dialog with the authorities and renew protest actions on February 15. They say that the authorities have not met any of their demands and so have shown that they do not intend to hold honest parliamentary elections. “We are refusing to talk to the authorities until at least one of the three main demands of the Council of the United Opposition is met,” stated opposition leader Gia Tortladze on the steps of the parliament yesterday.
The opposition published a memorandum two weeks ago containing 17 demands, the main ones of which were the release of political prisoners, the dismissal of Georgian Central Elections Commission chairman Levan Tarkhnishvili and a new election of the trustees board of Public Television. Speaker of the Georgian parliament Nino Burjanadze has been negotiating with the opposition for the last two weeks and promised to settle those issues in the nearest future. Deputy speaker of the parliament Mikheil Machavariani spoke to journalists immediately after Tortladze and said that the authorities are ready for compromise, but the opposition should not see that “as a sign of the authorities' weakness or of victory over it.”
Chairman of the Georgian Parliament Committee on Legal Issues Levan Bezhashvili told Kommersant that the opposition demands are impossible to meet. He said that among the 44 so-called political prisoners, besides those resisting the police in the demonstrations of last November 7, are people convicted of a terrorist act against Eduard Shevardnadze on February 9, 1998, in which two people were killed. In addition, that list includes Shalva Ramishvili, a journalist convicted of extorting money from Georgian MPs in 2005. The opposition also wants all charges dropped against former defense mister Irakly Okruashvili.
The other opposition demands are fraught with problems. Dismissing the head of the CEC would require changes to legislation and Georgian Public Television is controlled by Freedom In statute nonprofit organization, which has already criticized the government for an excessive soft position in relation to the opposition.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Feb. 12, 2008
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