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Tuesday, 30 December 2003 Volume 7 Number 242

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End Note

GEORGIA PREPARES FOR EXTRAORDINARY PRESIDENTIAL BALLOT

By Liz Fuller

Voters in Georgia go to the polls on 4 January to elect a successor to Eduard Shevardnadze, who was forced from office on 23 November on a wave of popular anger at the falsification of the outcome of the parliamentary elections three weeks earlier. Most observers both in Georgia and abroad anticipate that Mikhail Saakashvili, the charismatic leader of the opposition National Movement who spearheaded the campaign for Shevardnadze's resignation, will win by a considerable margin.

Five rival candidates have also registered for the ballot. They are former Imereti Governor Temur Shashiashvili; David the Builder Society Chairman Roin Liparteliani; Georgian Barristers Union head Kartlos Gharibashvili; Zurab Kelekhsashvili of the Mdzleveli political organization; and Zaza Sikharulidze. Liparteliani ran against Shevardnadze in the presidential election in 1995, and Gharibashvili ran in 1995 and 2000, but they polled less than 1 percent of the vote.

Former Georgian State Security Minister Igor Giorgadze, who submitted to the Central Election Commission (CEC) the required 50,000 signatures in support of his candidacy, was denied registration on the grounds that he has not been resident in Georgia for the past two years. Giorgadze fled the country in early September 1995 after being accused of masterminding a car-bomb attack on Shevardnadze. A further seven presidential hopefuls, including two women, one ethnic Russian, and one ethnic Armenian citizen of Georgia, either withdrew their applications or failed to collect the required signatures.

Giorgadze appealed, without success, against the CEC's refusal to register him, and alleged that the interim Georgian leadership is afraid to allow him to participate in the ballot because of the level of clandestine support he claims to command. Of the five registered alternatives to Saakashvili, only Shashiashvili, who made his mark as an energetic and innovative administrator, seems to have any hope of exceeding 10 percent of the vote. Shashiashvili has challenged his rivals, including Saakashvili, to a televised debate, but met no takers.

Saakashvili's challengers have complained to the CEC that he enjoys an unfair advantage, in that his activities as a member of the interim three-person leadership receive considerable media coverage. In addition, they have complained that the free airtime they have been allocated for election broadcasts is at a time of day (between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. local time) at which few people watch television. Gharibashvili has demanded that Saakashvili's registration be revoked on the grounds that it is illegal for Minister of State Zurab Zhvania to head his election campaign.

In other respects, however, the interim leadership and its appointee to head the CEC, Zurab Chiaberashvili who formerly headed the NGO Fair Elections, have stressed repeatedly their determination to ensure that the 4 January vote is not marred by a repetition of the egregious falsification that characterized previous ballots, but is acknowledged by the international community as free, fair, and democratic. To that end, they have appealed to all voters to reregister at their local polling station to ensure that no one is prevented from participating in the ballot because his or her name has been omitted from the electoral roll. As of 29 December, 1,739,324 persons have reregistered of the 2,870,000 who participated in the 2 November parliamentary ballot.

Reregistration has not, however, taken place in the Adjar Autonomous Republic, whose autocratic and authoritarian ruler, Aslan Abashidze, agreed only on 27 December under pressure from the international community to open polling stations in his fiefdom to allow the estimated 270,000 voters to participate in the ballot. Abashidze had previously argued that the presidential poll was unconstitutional, and that the timeframe of 45 days stipulated by the Georgian Constitution was too short to take measures to ensure that the outcome would not be rigged. Abashidze proposed instead postponing for a minimum of six months both the presidential ballot and the repeat voting for those 150 parliament seats to be allocated under the party-list system. He has also called for sweeping amendments to the constitution to transform Georgia into a federal state, in which Adjaria would enjoy even greater privileges than it currently does.

Abashidze could still appeal to members of his Democratic Revival Union to boycott the election, or alternatively to mark the "against all candidates" option. The opposition Labor Party, which alleges that Saakashvili's National Movement as well as the pro-Shevardnadze For a Free Georgia bloc benefited from the "redistribution" of ballots cast in the 2 November parliamentary election, has likewise called on its supporters to boycott the vote.

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