Guide to the Georgian Parliamentary Elections

The Messenger released this guide to the elections:

Once scheduled for this fall, these elections were moved forward at voter insistence after the crisis of November 2007. To defuse tensions, President Mikheil Saakashvili called a snap presidential election for January, which was eventually accompanied by two referendums. One asked whether parliamentary elections should be rescheduled for spring, the other whether voters supported Georgian membership in NATO. Voters overwhelmingly favored holding parliamentary elections in spring. In April, Saakashvili announced the vote would be held on May 21.

Who’s running?

Three blocs and nine parties are competing.

1. Georgian Politics
2. Republican Party
3. Alliance of the Rights, Topadze-Industrialists
4. Labor Party
5. United National Movement-For Victorious Georgia
6. Georgian Sportsmen Union
7. United Opposition (National Council, New Rights)
8. National Party of Radical-Democrats of the whole Georgia
9. Christian-Democratic Alliance
10. Christian Democrats
11. Traditionalists-Our Georgia and Women Party
12. Our Country

The ruling National Movement, the United Opposition, the Christian Democrats, the Labor Party and the Republicans are expected to perform most strongly.

Who’s watching

More than a dozen foreign organizations are sending over 800 observers, including the OSCE and the US National Democratic Institute. Over 30 local NGOs are also expected to keep an eye on the polls.

Who’s voting

The total number of eligible voters was 3,465,736 as of May 12, according to the Central Election Commission.

Votes can be cast from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m Tbilisi time at a total of 3 358 regular precinct election commissions and 72 special polling stations in Georgia. Another 47 polling stations were opened abroad.

Who’s counting

There will be exit polling today, jointly carried out by a group including a state university, the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies and the small Washington-based firm QEV Analytics.

The exit poll project has attracted criticism from opposition campaigners, who claim it will be biased in favor of the ruling party. They have called on supporters to boycott the polling.

Exit polling and other survey results are not allowed to be published or broadcast until the polls close today.

Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT)—a process in which observers count votes at the same time election officials do—will be conducted by the New Generation-New Initiative NGO. It plans to carry out PVT in all election districts in the country and will dispatch a total of 1500 observers.

The first official results are expected late tonight or early tomorrow.

The rules

• Parliament is shrinking from 235 to 150 seats, all of which are up for grabs today. 75 MPs will be elected through country-wide party lists, and 75 party-nominated MPs will be elected from individual districts, one MP per district.
• Parties must get at least five percent of the vote to win seats in the party list voting
• The top candidate in the 75 district races—those for ‘majoritarian’ seats—must win at least 30 percent of the vote to avoid a runoff
• Unlike the January presidential election, Georgians may not register to vote on the day of the election
• TV and radio broadcasts of election ads were required to stop 24 hours before election day.
• The CEC announces final election results by June 8

How it’s looking so far

In its second interim report, released last week, the OSCE election observer mission said it has received numerous allegations of violations—including widespread intimidation, illegal campaigning by civil servants and abuse of administrative resources—some of which it has substantiated.

It also noted the low level of preparedness at some precinct election commissions and suggested that media coverage of election campaigns favors the ruling party.

A delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, visiting Georgia at the end of April, expressed concern at the low level of public trust in the electoral process.

Government officials have strongly called for clean and democratic elections.

The day after

Leaders of the United Opposition have already called for demonstrations outside the Central Election Commission building at 11 p.m. tonight, when they say they will present the “real” results of the elections.

A large discrepancy between opposition expectations and official results could spur rallies over the next several days. With opposition campaign rhetoric explicitly warning of a revolution, the atmosphere will be tense.

Russia Sends More Troops to Georgia

Georgia accused Russia of fanning conflict on Tuesday after Moscow sent extra peacekeeping troops to Georgia's breakaway Abkhazia region to counter what it called a military build-up by Tbilisi.

The Russian move marked a new escalation in a crisis between the two ex-Soviet neighbors that has alarmed Georgia's allies in the West, who see the ex-Soviet state as a future NATO ally and a vital transit route for energy supplies. The move angered Tbilisi, which accuses the Russian force there of siding with the separatists.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said Russia's move had created a dangerous situation. "It is altogether obvious that this is part of a fast and worrying escalation of Russian measures for controlling territories," Bildt wrote on his blog. [More]

No MAP For Georgia or Ukraine, but NATO Vows Membership

Speaking at NATO's summit in Bucharest, Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said the the granting of Membership Action Plans (MAPs) to Ukraine and Georgia would have to await further dialogue. But he added a sweetener, saying the alliance had agreed the two countries "will become members of NATO."

“Today, we make clear that we support these countries' applications for MAP," he said. "Therefore, we will now begin a period of intensive engagement with both at a high political level to address the questions still outstanding pertaining to their MAP applications. We have asked [NATO] foreign ministers to make a first assessment of progress at their December 2008 meeting."

Despite the postponed decision, pro-NATO forces in Ukraine and Georgia celebrated the announcement, which offered stronger-than-expected support for their entry bids.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said, "I think we should be very happy," and added that it appeared as though Georgia had "suddenly jumped over the technical stage" of an action plan with the promise of full membership. "MAP is not as important when you have a commitment to accept us as members," he said. "Here we got a 100-percent guarantee, at least formally, for membership. That's very unusual." [More]

Friends of Georgia Hold Strategy Session in Lithuania

The New Friends of Georgia group of countries conferred in an enlarged and upgraded format on September 13-14 in Vilnius. This meeting shows that a strong nucleus of eight countries has developed within the European Union and NATO (alongside the United States in the latter case), supporting an active policy by the two organizations in Europe’s East generally and toward Georgia in particular.

Initiated in 2005 in Tbilisi by the three Baltic states, Poland, Ukraine, Romania, and Bulgaria, the New Friends’ group has matured this year. Georgia’s Black Sea neighbors Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU, while the Czech Republic and Sweden have joined the New Friends of Georgia group. The meeting in Vilnius was the first held at the level of ministers of foreign affairs in full format. The EU’s Special Representative for the South Caucasus, Peter Semneby, participated as an observer, while his Swedish compatriot, Minister of Foreign Affairs Carl Bildt, brought Sweden to the table for the first time. [More]

NATO, Georgia to share radars in 2007

Georgia's radars will probably be integrated into NATO's radar system by the end of this year, earlier than planned because of worries about Russian activities, the Georgian Defence Ministry said on Thursday.

"Recent incidents prompted discussions in Brussels, at NATO headquarters, to speed up these procedures, so that Georgia is incorporated into that system as soon as possible," Georgian Deputy Defence Minister Batu Kuteliya told Reuters. "They should probably be finished late this autumn." [More]

Georgia on His Mind: an Interview with Mikheil Saakashvili

On Aug. 8, a missile the size of a bus struck near a village some 50 miles north of this Eurasian country's capital city, Tbilisi. It failed to explode. In all likelihood the missile came from Russian jet fighters violating Georgian airspace, as Georgians quickly claimed--the incident was eerily similar to one in March, when Russian attack helicopters flew at night and, without provocation, fired missiles into Georgian territory.

In both cases, Georgian authorities showed the world radar flight path data as proof. The world did nothing the first time, and will likely do nothing again. Meanwhile, unexplained incursions continue daily. This is the kind of near-lethal brinkmanship which Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili believes will only encourage more belligerence from Russia.

Mr. Saakashvili has spent his first 3 1/2 years in office impelling his country forward economically, courting NATO and European Union membership, eradicating corruption and trying to woo Russian-supported secessionists back into the fold. Above all, he strives daily to keep his country, with a population of four million, on the mind of Western nations so its security and success will seem synonymous with theirs--and keep the Russians at bay. The Russians still seem to perceive post-Soviet Georgian independence as a kind of betrayal, responding with an array of destabilizing policies, such as the imposition of embargoes on Georgian goods.

Click [here] for Melik Kaylan's interview with the Georgian president.

Bulgaria Emerges as a Friend of Georgia’s

Georgian officials recently hosted an official delegation from Bulgaria. The country broke from its communist past through reforms that paved the way for NATO membership in 2004 and the European Union in 2007. Bulgaria, together with Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Romania and the Czech Republic, is a member of the New Group of Georgia’s Friends, a cluster of European countries which was founded in early 2005 to help Georgia with its Euro-Atlantic and European integration processes.

The Bulgarian delegation was headed by Bulgaria’s deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs, Mr. Ivailo Kalfin, who met with his Georgian counterpart, Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr. Gela Bezhuashvili, as well as the Georgian prime minister and deputy parliamentary speaker. The delegation also included some twenty Bulgarian businessmen who came to study investment opportunities in Georgia. During this high-profile visit it became especially obvious that Bulgaria’s cooperation with and support for Georgia are developing actively in various directions. [More]

Kremlin tears up arms pact with Nato

President Vladimir Putin yesterday signalled that Russia was on a new and explosive collision course with Nato when he dumped a key arms control treaty limiting the deployment of conventional forces in Europe.

Putin said Moscow was unilaterally withdrawing from the Soviet-era Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty because of 'extraordinary circumstances that affect the security of the Russian Federation', the Kremlin said. These required 'immediate measures'. [More]