Georgia’s Scarce Opposition
Rose Revolution Heavy Blow to Georgia’s Political Parties
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| 150 seats remain vacant in the 235-seat Parliament. |
The Supreme Court of Georgia annulled the results of the proportional vote of the November 2 parliamentary elections due to massive irregularities. Thus, the March 28 repeat parliamentary elections will be held by the party-lists only. Thus 150 seats will be distributed while 75 MPs elected in single-mandate constituencies on November 2 will retain their mandates.
One issue worries the political observers – can any of the political parties apart from the Burjanadze-Democrats and the New National Movement, which spearheaded President Eduard Shevardnadze’s resignation, make it into the new parliament?
The late-December poll commissioned by the Open Society-Georgia Foundation, suggests negative response. The National Movement and the Burjanadze-Democrats have announced their intention to run for the parliamentary elections jointly. If this decision stands, the poll suggests 76% of the voters would support them. None of the other parties would be able to clear the threshold of 7% of the nation-wide vote necessary to gain the seats in the parliament.
Along with the huge popular support, the bloc already enjoys with the powerful administrative and state resources, which always plays a key role in the Georgian elections.
“Once in the opposition, [Saakashvili, Burjanadze and Zhvania] took over the power and are left without any real opposition,” political commentator Ia Antidze of Radio Liberty told Civil Georgia.
Antidze says Shevardnadze’s party has collapsed right after his resignation; most of the other influential political figures that supported previous regime quit the politics, some of them are even wanted now for fraud allegations. Other parties formerly in opposition to Shevardnadze were late to support or at least endorse November revolution, and thus lost the battle for the voters’ hearts and minds.
“Of course, several political parties, which before the revolution enjoyed with some level of support, including the Labor Party, the New Rights, Industry will Save Georgia and Revival Union [led by Adjarian leader Aslan Abashidze] still continue to play a role in the internal politics, but we can not regard them as an influential forces any more, as they lost popular support after the November events,” Ia Antadze concludes.
These parties tried to pressure the government into postponing the parliamentary elections till late spring or summer, but in vain.
“We could not take into consideration proposal of several political parties regarding holding of polls for June, as the country needs a new legislative body as soon as possible. Further delay of elections would hinder normal political life in the country,” Burjanadze said on January 9.
Opposition argues that holding of the parliamentary elections in March would preclude compiling of the new and accurate voter registry and, more importantly, would deprive political parties of the chance to conduct an effective election campaign.
“Regretfully, the authorities did not take into account our position about appointing parliamentary elections on a later date. This is a great political mistake,” Pikria Chikhradze of the New Rights party commented on January 9.
Opponents of the new authorities also say that early elections might also bring an end to political pluralism in Georgian legislative body, and the country will get a single-party parliament with no real opposition force to balance it.
Threatened by elimination from the political arena, several parties have launched themselves into a frenzy of composing the election blocs. The Traditionalists and the National-Democratic parties have already announced formation of the bloc and hold consultations with Industrialists and the New Rights to form a united right-wing opposition.
Akaki Asatiani leader of the Traditionalists was among the leaders of the velvet revolution, but split with them over Saakashvili’s presidency.
“If we manage to unite before the parliamentary elections, be sure, this will be a strong, rightist union, which will really gain success in the parliamentary elections,” Akaki Asatiani, the leader of the bloc, told Civil Georgia. Asatiani says they can count on 10% of the nationwide vote, but most observers tend to think this estimate is unrealistic.
Temur Shashiashvili, who ran for presidency in January 4 elections and received up to 2% of votes, also intends to form a political party. He governed western Georgian region of Imereti during the Shevardnadze’s presidency, and always criticized Saakashvili for populism. However, Shashiashvili has not named his political allies yet.
Independent experts are also worried that single-bloc (but bi-partisan) parliament may damage development of the political parties and the political system as a whole. They advocate for reducing the 7% threshold to pave the way into the parliament to the organizationally mature parties that have miscalculated their bets in November events.
“7% barrier should be reduced to 5% for two reasons. Firstly, parties who receive up to 7% of votes but can not clear this barrier, remain outside the Parliament, thus these important number of votes are actually lost. And the second reason is – to avoid presence of only one, or two parties in the legislative body,” Kakha Lomaia, director of the Open Society-Georgia Foundation said at the conference on January 10, which was discussing the constitutional amendments. Influential legal expert Davit Usupashvili also supports the idea.
In the meantime concerns mount that the parties once again lose the incentive for advocating clearly identifiable political programs. The revolution leaders were endorsed by the protest vote, as Georgia’s citizens looked for changes facing the stagnant governance by Shevardnadze. However, the winners still have to flesh out their specific policies. Absent that, ideologically grounded opposition platform cannot be created.