Prison scandal mars Georgian votes

TBILISI, Georgia: President Mikheil Saakashvili faced his biggest test in a decade in power yesterday as Georgians voted in a parliamentary election overshadowed by a prison abuse scandal that has fuelled accusations of government repression.
Saakashvili, who swept to the presidency after the Rose Revolution of 2003 and led the Caucasus Mountain country into a disastrous war with Russia in 2008, says his main challenger Bidzina Ivanishvili would move the former Soviet republic away from the West and bring it back into Moscow’s orbit.
Ivanishvili, a billionaire tycoon with a fortune nearly half the size of Georgia’s economy, hopes the prison scandal will convince undecided voters that Saakashvili has become an undemocratic leader who tramples on rights and freedoms.
The West, which has praised Saakashvili as a reformer and opponent of corruption, is watching the election closely.
It wants a stable Georgia because of the country’s role as a conduit for Caspian Sea energy supplies to Europe and its pivotal location between Russia, Iran, Turkey and Central Asia.
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in Brussels that the election was “a litmus test of the way democracy works in Georgia”.
Before the vote, video of torture, beatings and sexual assault of prison inmates led to street protests after it was aired on two television channels opposed to Saakashvili.
The furore undermined Saakashvili’s image as a reformer who had imposed the rule of law and rooted out corruption.
“I’m voting against violence and abuse. How can I do otherwise after what we have all seen on TV?” Natela Zhorzholiani, 68, said outside a polling station at a school in the capital, Tbilisi.
She said she was voting for the six-party Georgian Dream movement led by Ivanishvili, who has reshaped the political landscape by uniting the usually fractious opposition since entering politics less than a year ago.
Saakashvili, 44, must step down after a presidential election next year, when reforms weakening the head of state and giving more power to parliament and the prime minister are to take affect.
If his United National Movement retains dominance of parliament, it may give him a way to remain in charge of the country of 4.5 million, an important gas and oil transit route to the West. If not, Ivanishvili could become premier and Georgia’s dominant politician.
“Besides being a contest for parliament, it is also a shadow leadership election,” said Thomas de Waal, a Caucasus expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.
Georgian Dream said Monday’s voting was marred by incidents of electoral violations and violence. It alleged that an assailant attacked a coalition member on a precinct electoral commission in Tbilisi with a baseball bat, breaking her leg.
The Central Election Commission said the chairman of a polling station in the town of Rustavi was wounded in a separate attack but that overall voting was taking place in “a calm environment”.
FROM: REUTERS