New Leadership Warned, as Elections Loom
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| Government is cool to CoE’s recommendations over the upcoming elections. |
However, with the elections less than five weeks away, there are no signs that the polls are looming in Georgia – there is not even a stealth election campaigning by the parties.
The ruling coalition of the National Movement party, led by President Mikheil Saakashvili and Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania’s party United Democrats, is the only favorite in the elections. The parties intend a merger; as a result, one of them will cease activity.
The political parties, which are in the opposition to the new leadership, could not recover yet from the November revolution, which turned to be a major blow for them. The current opposition mainly consists of the parties, which lost some level of support by distancing themselves from the November events.
The election bloc of National-Democratic Party and Traditionalists, as well as a newly created bloc Rightist Opposition, consisting of Industrialists and the New Rights parties are the main opposition coalitions to run for the parliament.
The Republican Party and the Union of National Forces, which previously formed a bloc with President Saakashvili’s National Movement, refused to participate in the upcoming elections.
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.
As a result political parties will contest for 150 seats in the legislative body, while 75 MPs elected in single-mandate constituencies on November 2 will retain their mandates in the 235-seat Parliament.
Political analysts say there is little hope for other parties, but the ruling coalition, to clear 7% threshold, necessary to secure seats in the legislative body. Thus, local as well as the foreign observers fear that Georgia faces threat of one-party Parliament with no opposition to balance the legislative body.
The Council of Europe (CoE) has already called the authorities to reduce the threshold to 4-5%, which corresponds to the European averages.
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| Walter Schwimmer and Parliamentary Chairperson Nino Burjanadze. CoE Photo. |
He said that lowering this threshold “would give the opposition more of a chance to have elected members,” adding that the Parliamentary Assembly had already advocated this.
However, Georgian authorities are cool to this recommendation. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said he is against reduction of threshold for admission to the Parliament.
In order to avoid problems with clearing the 7% barrier, Saakashvili suggested the opposition parties to unite and create blocs for the March 28 parliamentary elections. Ex-President Shevardnadze used to give his opposition [Mikheil Saakashvili, Zurab Zhvania and others, which took over power after the Shevardnadze’s ouster] the very same advise, but the opposition has always failed to unite on the eve of elections.
The Central Election Commission (CEC) extended the deadline for registration of blocs twice. However, only two more or less significant election coalitions have been created till the expiration of deadline – February 20 – the Rightist Opposition, consisting of the New Rights and the Industrialists and union of National-Democratic party and the Traditionalists.
Along with the huge popular support, the ruling coalition enjoys with the powerful administrative and state resources, which always plays a key role in the Georgian elections. The authorities also maintain full control of the elections administrations at all levels.
In the wake of the Council of Europe and OSCE’s calls for securing political balance in the election administrations, President Saakashvili proposed to allocate two seats in lower level election commissions to opposition parties. But authorities refuse to change the composition of the Central Election Commission, were 8 seats out of 15 are under the authorities’ control.
MP Mikheil Machavariani, who is a leading member of Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania’s United Democrats party, told reporters that the ruling coalition is ready to for concessions in the lower level commissions.
“In the district and precinct election commission, were the vote counting is held, we [the authorities] are ready to be in the minority,” Machavariani told reporters.
However, the opposition dismissed as “a sop” President Saakashvili’s proposal over allocating two more seats in the commissions to the opposition. “We want this proposal to be indicated in the law, thus the relevant amendment should be introduced to the election code,” Irakli Mindeli of the Socialists opposition party said.
But as the authorities say there is no enough time for introduction of the amendments to the election code.
The international society looks forward for the March 28 elections, as these polls are regarded to be a real test of democracy for the Georgia’s new leadership.
Referring to the preparations for the parliamentary elections on 28 March, CoE Secretary General Walter Schwimmer expressed the hope that they would comply with the European standards especially concerning the drawing up of the lists of voters, the confidentiality of the ballot, and the balanced composition of the electoral commissions.
“I hope the pre-election campaign will qualify to be called fair,” the CoE Secretary General said.
A five-member delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of Council of Europe, led by Mátyás Eörsi will make a “pre-election” visit to Georgia to assess preparations for the parliamentary polls on February 25-28 and a full delegation of up to 30 Assembly members will observe the polling as part of an international election observation mission.