Voters in Georgia go to the polls on Monday in the most bitter and closely fought election since the pro-western rose revolution swept president Mikheil Saakashvili to power in 2004.
For the first time, Saakashvili’s ruling United Movement Party faces a serious challenge from an opposition coalition headed by the flamboyant Georgian billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili. Both sides claim that independent polls put their parties in front.
The parliamentary election follows an acrimonious campaign that has seen allegations the government has intimidated and arrested opposition activists. Ivanishvili accuses Saakashvili of turning Georgia into an authoritarian state and on Sunday said that Georgia’s human rights record was now worse than Russia‘s.
The government has hit back. Officials say the billionaire, who made his fortune in Russia in the 1990s, is a Kremlin stooge attempting to use his vast resources to buy up the election. They also say some members of his six-party Georgian Dream coalition are nationalists and Stalinists – a claims Ivanishvili rejects.
Georgia is now deeply divided. Most residents in the capital Tbilisi – where an estimated 100,000 Ivanishvili supporters rallied on Saturday – support the opposition. But Saakashvili enjoys an electoral advantage in rural areas, and among the country’s ethnic Armenian and Azeri minorities.
Western diplomats fear that a disputed election result could lead to weeks of turmoil and street protests. Some opposition supporters admit they will take action if the Georgian Dream coalition fails to win.
“There will be a revolution. We will take to the streets. We’ll fight with our fists,” Georgi Gogoladze, an unemployed university graduate in tourism, said on Saturday.
Tamar Chugoshvili, chair of Georgia’s young lawyers’ association, said discontent with the government was widespread. She said Saakashvili had at first developed the country’s economy, and promoted democratic values.
In recent years, however, he had failed both as a democrat and a reformer, she suggested: “At the beginning he did some positive things. But where he really failed was in building institutions, including democratic institutions,” she said. She added: “He didn’t build parliament as a parliament or a judiciary as a judiciary. Instead power is concentrated in Georgia in the hands of three or four people who make all the decisions.”
Chugoshvili said the election campaign had been a battle not between rival political parties, but between the opposition and the state. The playing field had been “uneven” she suggested, with the media and party financing rules titled in the government’s advantage. “The judiciary has acted in favour of the ruling party only,” she said.