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Shellgame election spurs political crisis in Georgia

BILLY I AHMED
THE Republic of Georgia was established in 1995 and has an estimated population of just under six million. Georgia borders on the Black Sea in the west, on Turkey and Armenia in the south, on Azerbaijan in the east, and on Russia in the north. Tbilisi is the capital and by far the largest city. Geogia proclaimed its independence from the USSR on April 6, 1991. In January 1992, its leader, Zviad Gamsakhuridia, was sacked and latter accused of dictatorial policies such as the jailing of opposition leaders, human right abuses, and clamping down on the media. The opposition established a ruling military council until a civilian authority could be restored. In 1992, Eduard Shevardnadze, the Soviet Union's foreign minister under Gorbachev, became president.
Agriculture is a leading occupation in Georgia; it is rich in minerals and has a large and varied industrial sector. Its chief manufactures include transport equipment, electric motors, machine tools, iron and steel, but many industries collapsed after independence, and warfare, corruption, and the effects of Russia's economic troubles have hindered economic redevelopment. The construction of an oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea to a Black Sea terminal at Supsa, Georgia, promised greater foreign investment in the economy.
But despite large amounts of US aid, Georgia, once one of the most prosperous regions in Soviet Russia, grew poorer under Mr. Shevardnadze -- partly because of widespread corruption and crime and partly because of the damage wrought by internal conflicts.
Georgia, a country with such resources is in the midst of thick political unrest threatening to get out of control.
Tens of thousands took to the streets of the capital, Tbilisi, over the last week, in protest at the peculating of the November 2 parliamentary elections by allies of President Eduard Shevardnadze.
With larger compunction planned, Shevardnadze has mobilised his supporters to thwart the protest, with Reuters reporting that "hundreds of men -- many in black leather coats -- were bussed in from an autonomous region in western Georgia" to this end.
Civil war is looming, with many dreading a rerunning of the bloodshed eleven years ago in 1992 when Shevardnadze shot his way to power.
The November 2 elections, considered as pivotal in determining a successor when Shevardnadze is due to step down in 2005, have been labeled "spectacularly flawed" by international observers.
The rigged results gave Shevardnadze's cronies including Aslan Abashidze an unlikely victory. In contrast, exit polls and alternative vote tabulations had clearly given opposition leader Mikhail Saakashvili first place. The knavish oddity of the result was most openly displayed when Abashidze awarded himself 95 percent of the vote in his effectively autonomous feudal system of Ajaria. Saakashvili is demanding that both the Ajarian results and those from the ethnic Armenian region of Kvemo Kartli be annulled.
Several election observers and media reported stuffed ballot boxes, policemen registered to vote at multiple ballot stations, names of tens of thousand are missing from electoral registration lists and their names replaced by prodigious numbers of the deceased. Some districts reported up to 30 percent of residents missing from electoral rolls. Those who could vote endured hours of queuing and browbeating by state forces.
Rustavi-2 television reported pro-government police hijacking ballot boxes and rerouting them via police stations. The ballot in Kutaisi, Georgia's second city was reported as "riddled with irregular-ities" by Imeldi television channel.
Rustavi-2 also reported how an electoral district with just 300 registered voters produced 1,500 completed ballots in the same city. Violent clashes occurred in the provincial city of Tkibuli, while voter harassment by state forces was almost universal.
Weeks before Shevardnadze had
Several election observers and media reported stuffed ballot boxes, policemen registered to vote at multiple ballot stations, names of tens of thousand are missing from electoral registration lists and their names replaced by prodigious numbers of the deceased. Some districts reported up to 30 percent of residents missing from electoral rolls. Those who could vote endured hours of queuing and browbeating by state forces.
watched the neighboring Aliev ruling sorority gracelessly rig their election without serious international condemnation and went so far as to publicly declare his intention to do the same.
Shevardnadze was Mikhail Gorachev's foreign minister and rendered considerable services towards capitalist restoration in the former Soviet Union.
Like his former Azeri counterpart Heidar Aliev, recently succeeded by his son Ilham, Shevardnadze was a former local KGB chief and devoted Stalinist.
BBC correspondents say Mr. Shevardnadze, once a popular and admired leader, is now seen by many Georgians as a failure who allowed corruption to flourish and poverty to spread under his rule.
When he first became leader of Georgia in 1992, he was praised for ending the anarchy that threatened to engulf newly-independent Georgia following the break-up of the Soviet Union.
He had already won plaudits for the way he helped transform the Soviet Union when he was its foreign minister under Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s.
Both men came to power by force in their respective countries and imposed authoritarian regimes supported by Washington, whilst maintaining intermittently close relations with Moscow. Fundamentally, both Aliev and Shevardnadze backed the US-led plan to construct the 1,000-mile Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. The 40 percent completed oil pipeline between Baku and Ceyhan has just been granted full approval by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development -- this within days of receiving similar approval from the World Bank.
Georgia's geopolitical significance has come into limelight since a consortium of international oil companies decided at the insistence of the Clinton administration to bypass both Russia and Iran and pipe oil and gas supplies from Azerbaijan to the Mediterranean via Georgia.
Shevardnadze is leaning more and more on the Russians for support, is alarmingly for Bush regime. President Putin has congratulated Shevardnadze promising, "to give all possible support" to his regime. Georgians fear Moscow might ultimately send troops to Tbilisi to prop up Shevardnadze should his rule begin to falter. The Georgian president has again spoken in recent days with Putin, reaffirming popular fears that the
country is being drawn much closer into Moscow's sphere of influence.
This tilting of Georgian president's towards Moscow makes the Bush administration downhearted. So far the White House has limited itself to making condemnations of electoral a smokescreen. Few media commentators believe Shevardnadze is a spent force now to Washington but that the Bush administration will be reluctant to ditch him at such a crucial stage in the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil and gas pipeline running through Georgian territory.
Beyond the vying interests of Russia and the US is the growing anger of the Georgian people whose protests are becoming more robust as time goes on. After Interior Minister Koba Narchamashvili ordered large numbers of troops stationed in the Pankisi Gorge to Tbilisi to confront the protests, demonstrators blocked their route with felled trees. The political crisis has brought the Georgian economy to a virtual standstill, rail freight has been halved and nothing is moving at Black Sea ports.
The talk that failed between Shevardnadze and Saakashvili have failed to broker any agreement -- ending with mutual animosity and threats. The atmosphere within the country is described as extremely polarised. Saakashvili's National Movement is calling for Shevardnadze to resign. Saakashvili campaigned under the slogan "Georgia without Shevardnadze" and promises the president a revolution if need be, likening Shevardnadze's future fate to that of the executed Romanian leader Nicolai Ceausescu. For his part Shevardnadze has rekindled memories of his usurping of Zvaid Gamasakhurdia and the bloodshed in Abkhazia in a crude attempt to intimidate the Georgian population.
The weak point of Shevardnadze's weakness is his current alignment with former enemy Abashidze, a regional warlord who controls the Ajarian region through his Revival party. Abashidze has urged the president to bring the full force of the state to bear against the protesters.
Shevardnadze's rule has been nothing short of a disaster for the Georgian people. Since the early 1990s, out of a population of less than six million, one million Georgians have emigrated abroad. Over the same period Georgian GDP has slumped two-thirds and, according to the International Herald Tribune, 80 percent of the economy is illicit consisting of contraband and general black market activity.
Georgia is ranked highly on the lists of the world's most corrupt and criminal states as Shevardnadze and his gang fill their Swiss bank accounts. The protection of illicit gain is believed to be the predominant reason behind the president's reluctance to allow others like Saakashvili a place at the table.
More than half of the country's population live below the poverty line and monthly wages are as little as $30. Government corruption and nepotism are out of control, while pensioners frequently fail to receive their meagre $7 allowance for months on end.
Crumpling living standards are no doubt fuelling the street protests. Social polarisation is starkly evident. Writing just prior to the election, the BBC warned of a possible social explosion in Georgia: "Anger simmers just beneath the surface of Georgian life. Anger at falling living standards, anger at the in-your-face wealth of the new-rich, anger at the arbitrary powers of the police, anger at the corruption of government officials, anger at the failures of Georgian foreign policy."
Last week, Shevardnadze finally agreed to step down in the face of the continuing protests against the election. It remains to be seen what will happen now.