Crossfire: Georgia Votes

Saakashvili’s governing party, the United National Movement (UNM), has an impressive record of accomplishments during its years in power. It has expanded public services, sharply reduced corruption, improved the country’s infrastructure and taken steps to integrate Georgia into the West with the eventual goal of membership in NATO and the European Union.Serious failures, however, mar these achievements.Economic growth has been slow despite pro-market reforms.Critics charge that Saakashvili has failed to build durable democratic institutions or protect human rights."A small group of people in the executive branch make all the decisions, claimed one prominent critic in the New York Times, "and there is no check or balance on this power.”Thomas DeWaal has accurately described the UNM as combining free market Westernizing ideology with the bureaucratic machine of a typical post-Soviet governing party.

Saakashvili also has been unable to reintegrate breakaway South Ossetia and Abkhazia since the bitter 2008 war with Russia.Relations with Moscow, which has dismissed Georgia as a "PR project of the West,” are tense: the hatred between Saakashvili and Putin is highly personal, according to press reports.Georgian officials charge that Russian military exercises in the Southern Military District in mid-September were designed to intimidate Tbilisi and threatened regional security (Last month Putin confirmed he approved a plan to invade Georgia in 2007 and that Russia trained separatist fighters in South Ossetia before the fighting).

The UNM is leading in the polls, but faces a major challenge from Georgian Dream (GD), the disparate opposition coalition led by billionaire businessman and philanthropist Bidzina Ivanishvili.Ivanishvili promises to strengthen democratic institutions and improve the investment climate.Despite the liberal image Ivanishvili would like to project, as Laura Linderman and Ross Wilson have pointed out, some elements of the GD coalition have staked out positions more intolerant and less democratic than that of their leader.One noted expert on Georgian politics, Ghia Nodia, believes some members of Ivanishvili’s coalition do not "want to win the election, they want to destroy the government and put people in prison.”

In foreign affairs, Ivanishvili says he favors NATO membership for Georgia but would seek to improve ties with Russia.There is no direct evidence, as Saakashvili has charged, that Ivanishvili would do Moscow’s bidding – he renounced his Russian citizenship before beginning his political career and has sold off his Russian assets, largely in the banking and metals sectors.But the opposition leader’s ambiguous business origins in Moscow’s opaque morass of power and Big Money suggest close ties to the Kremlin Establishment.Ivanishvili, who went by the name "Boris” while working in Russia, founded Metalloinvest, now a holding company for Putin backer Alisher Usmanov.He created Rossisskii Kredit Bank in the early 1990s with long-time partner Vitaly Malkin, today a prominent member of the Russian Federation Council (Malkin, who visited Washington this spring to lobby against the Magnitsky Bill, was denied entry in Canada in 2009, according to press reports, because of alleged involvement in money laundering and international arms deals). One expert claimed Ivanishvili sold his Russian companies to Putin cronies. Ivanishvili, whose reported $6.4 billion in wealth is roughly equivalent to half Georgia’s gross domestic product, answers this criticism by pointing to how much he has done for Georgia: the construction of 500 schools, 600 churches, a state military base, and a sparklingly new hospital in his hometown of Chorvila.

An OSCE report this week noted the "increasingly polarized” election campaign, describing the two sides’ election messages as "confrontational and rough.”The report stated that the opposition has opportunities to "convey their messages to the electorate,” but cited NGO complaints about the "atmosphere of subtle [government] pressure and intimidation towards opposition views...”It also noted "criticism and confusion” about voter registration procedures.The report’s judgment on the balance of campaign media coverage was mixed.Last week televised videos propagated by the anti-Saakashvili media showing the torture and sexual abuse of the country’s prison inmates sparked widespread protests and forced Saakashvili to fire the prisons minister and arrest 11 prison officials.In his speech at the UN General Assembly this week Saakashvili declared his response to the prison-abuse scandal showed Georgia is more democratic than Russia.There, he added "these things happened almost every day…and nobody …gives a damn about it.”

In Washington, where free and fair elections next week are a prerequisite for the expansion of ties with Tbilisi, a State Department official said he believes that, despite official irregularities during the campaign, the vote will be competitive because the opposition has the money to overcome the obstacles put in front of it by the government. The US has nevertheless also publicly warned Saakashvili against tinkering with the constitution so as to prolong his rule, (ironically) Putin-style, after his term ends next year.As the race enters its last few days reliable polls indicate a strong lead for the United National Movement, but many voters are still undecided.Ivanishvili this week called Saakashvili a "son of a dog” and warned he was ready to launch mass protests if there were "grave violations” at the polls, "We can make one million people take to the streets.”

Dr. Donald N. Jensen

VOA Russian Service