Georgian Opposition Doesn’t Attack
// Mikheil Saakashvili’s party wins in the parliamentary elections
The first result of the Georgian parliamentary elections came in yesterday. The ruling party received the majority. The opposition had threatened to storm the Central Elections Commission if it lost, but it did not. Kommersant correspondents Olga Allenova and Georgy Dvali have the details from Tbilisi.
Soccer against the Opposition
The opposition began a public meeting, as it had promised, at 11:00 p.m. Wednesday night. The square in front of the Hall of Sports was half full. There were no more than 3000 people. The organizers attributed the weak turnout to the League of Champions final match, which was being broadcast at the same time. They said Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili purposefully chose May 21 for the elections because he knew that Georgian men would be too busy for politics that evening. They even erected a screen on the square so the opposition electorate could watch the game from there, but it did not attract the crowds anyway.
“Don’t believe the official results,” opposition leader Irakly Iashvili told his colleagues. “The ruling party did not win! It has 34 percent, and the united opposition has 40 percent!”
His words elicited a response from the crowd, but without particular enthusiasm. Possibly many in the crowd understood that the opposition’s tactics were to pressure the Central Elections Commission for a recount. Maybe not many people understood where the opposition got their numbers from at midnight. Maybe they were simply tired of conflict.
Exit polls published by the authorities in the evening showed the ruling party with a security lead with about 60 percent of the vote, and the united opposition with 14 percent. Experts said the opposition electorate was disappointed and did not come out to the polls.
“The opposition promised to overthrow Saakashvili for a long time,” expert Alexander Rondeli told us. “A large part of the electorate was disposed toward revolution. When that electorate understood that there would be no revolution, and the opposition leader called them back out to the polls, they became disappointed. The thought they had been tricked.”
The opposition members who came to the meeting were urged not to believe the exit polls. They said the numbers were distorted by the opposition’s refusal to take part in the polls. “At their pre-election meetings, the opposition told people not to participate in the exit polls,” noted expert Merab Pachulia. “So they did it intentionally?”
At a break in the soccer game, images of voting irregularities caught by the opposition were shown on the screen. They were mainly squabbles of unclear cause. Several times pictures were shown of a member of the election commission entering the voting booth to “help” a voter. Twice opposition cameras got shots of a voting booth with seven elderly women in it at the same time. The Georgian Central Elections Commission, commenting on those shots for Kommersant, said they probably came from Marneuli District, which has a predominantly Azeri population. “There are people there who don’t know any Georgian,” the CEC spokesman said. “And Georgian law prohibits the publication of ballots in other languages. Possibly that was why someone from the polling station decided to help those people. But it is a violation, and we will examine the facts.”
Late at night, it became clear that the crowd was not going to grow after the match ended, so the leaders called an end to it. “We will wait for the official results, and then we will decide what to do together,” announced opposition leader Levan Gachicheladze.
Everyone understood that it was defeat. Water cannons and cordons had been set up around the CEC, but the opposition’s threatened storming of it did not take place. From the Hall of Sports people did not go to the CEC. They went home. Many said that the opposition leaders “gave up fast,” because almost all of them won places in the parliament.
The leaders themselves said that it was stupid to start a conflict before the official results were released. “We decided to concentrate on work in the regional election commissions and the CEC so the authorities could not falsify the vote,” opposition leader David Gamkrelidze told Kommersant. “But we have not renounced protests and we will continue them as soon as a long-term program is worked out.”
The President Promised
Almost immediately after the exit poll results were released, the president went on the air on all Georgian television channels and thanked his citizens for their activeness, discipline and support. “I will not hide it from you,” he said, “I was amazed, even though I have always believed in the wisdom of my people, by the high level of support that we received at the polls. And that was after four years of painful reforms! The unique qualities of our people are seen in this. Our people voted to continue reforms and Euro-Atlantic integration.”
Saakashvili promised that he would not change the constitution, even though he will have more than 100 of the 150 members of the new parliament, which is the constitutional majority. Expert Niki Imnaishvili thought that “The president was answering those who are worried that he will take advantage of his parliamentary majority to extend his term in office.” Deputy speaker of the parliament Mikhail Machavariani told Kommersant that “All important political questions, including the extension of the president’s term, will be decided not by the majority but by consensus with the opposition.”
One the night the results were released, the president made one more populist move to convince voters not to go out to meetings. He flew to Zugdidi and visited Nana Kardava, a resident of Gali District in Abkhazia, in the local hospital. She was wounded near the Inguri River, which forms the border with Abkhazia, in the incident that took place on Wednesday. Standing by her bedside, the president said she had done “an act of civic bravery” in coming to vote in the elections and promised to punish her attackers, whoever they might be. He did not fail to needle the opposition at the same time. “It is easy to appear on television and criticize the authorities. It is harder to face bullets to do your civic duty,” he pointed out.
The First Conclusions
Yesterday morning, CEC representative Zurab Kachkachishvili released the voting results after 10 percent were counted. The ruling United National Movement led with almost 63 percent. The United Opposition was in second place with 14 percent. The Labor Party and Christian Democrats also passed the 5-percent barrier. The CEC will release the final results on Friday.
“The opposition boycott of the counting of the votes did not have a mass character,” Kachkachishvili told Kommersant. “The CEC annulled the results at several polling stations after the examination of complaints and confirmation of violations. That may change the outcome insignificantly.”
A Labor Party spokesman told Kommersant that the party “does not consider the elections fair and will begin a mass protest action to demand a recount of the votes.” The party’s main argument was that its leader, Shalva Natelashvili, according to official data, lost in his native Dusheti District to “the ruling party that is hated by all.” Levan Berdzenishvili, one of the leaders of the Republican Party, which will not enter the parliament, according to the preliminary count, promised Kommersant that there would be “an adequate response” after the final count was made known.
Only the United National Party is satisfied with the results of the elections. “We won in all regions, including Tbilisi, although we lost in the capital in the presidential elections,” deputy speaker of the parliament Machavariani told Kommersant. “Not only did we win in districts with proportional lists, we won in 71 of the 75 majoritarian districts. The people understood who can do the business and who was waving their tongues.”
The international observers have made their first conclusions as well. “The elections were fair as a whole,” stated Matthias Jorsch, chief of the PACE observation mission. Kakha Dzagania, a Labor Party leader, responded that the observer was “a corrupt Euro-official bought by Saakashvili.”
“The assessments of the West have always been received positively in Georgia,” commented expert Pachulia. “But, after January 5, many here began to say that there is no difference between Western diplomats and the Russian Rushailo, who goes to all the elections and says they are good everywhere. As a matter of fact, the West is supporting not Saakashvili, but the seed of democracy in this country. If they had not supported the elections on January 5 and the current elections, we would have returned to 1993 and now we would be sitting in a ruined city without heat or electricity.”
Olga Allenova, Georgy Dvali, Tbilisi
All the Article in Russian as of May 23, 2008
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