After the ousting of Eduard Shevardnadze from the Georgian presidency in November 2003 – memorably dubbed the ‘rose revolution’ – the new regime in Tbilisi set about consolidating its power across the country. Firstly, a new presidential election was held on 4th January, 2004 which was won by the favourite, Mikheil Saakashvili with a Stalinist 96.27% of the vote – an even higher percentage than that recorded for the West’s former favourite Eduard Shevardnadze in 1992 (95.6%). New parliamentary elections followed in March as the conduct of the previous poll held in November 2003 had been roundly condemned by the international community’s OSCE-led observer mission. However, the new poll was only to elect representatives from the proportional lists to the parliament as - for some peculiar twist of logic - the election of majoritarian candidates in November was regarded as fair even though it was conducted at the same time and according to the same rules.
Georgia 2004: The Rose Revolution Ploughs On
Hello magazine, Georgian-style: President Saakashvili and Interior Minister Irakli Okruashvili pictured with a couple of lovelies
In the months following the ‘rose revolution’ the government in Tbilisi increased the heat on the authorities in the autonomous republic of Adjara whose president, Aslan Abashidze, had long been a thorn in the sides of the Georgian leadership. Whereas Shevardnadze had never pushed the underlying hostility between Adjara and the centre to breaking point, the new regime was determined to overthrow Abashidze’s government and return the region with its economically vibrant port Batumi to its full control. Finally, after months of pressure from Tbilisi, the Adjaran regime collapsed on 6th May 2004 and Abashidze left the country. Further instability in Georgia was avoided by the intervention of Russia’s former foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, who accompanied Abashidze to Moscow having convinced him to give up power. This was a repeat performance of Ivanov’s November 2003 visit to Tbilisi when he convinced Shevardnadze too to ‘move aside’ and make way for the ‘reformers’..
The new regime in Tbilisi flexed its muscles by arresting numerous members of the old Shevardnadze apparat and throwing them into jail. Dubious procedures were used to settle scores with members of the former regime but, these were hailed as part of the legitimate fight against corruption by Georgia’s friends in the West. Reaching new heights of cynicism and venality, the authorities released several high profile prisoners after they paid thousands of dollars in what looked like a bail bond but was, in fact, ransom money. No accounting has been given of the eventual disposition of these sums.
Meanwhile, Saakashvili continued to jet around the world addressing the Council of Europe and making regular pilgrimages to Washington where he also improved his bona fides by increasing the number of Georgian troops sent to help the coalition in Iraq. He also entered into agreements to further bolster Western aid to train and equip the Georgian army.
However, 8 months into his assumption of power, there was little if any improvement in the lives of ordinary people in Georgia. And, there was growing criticism of Saakashvili’s intemperate and bombastic style. By summer 2004 he had moved on from the relatively painless subjugation of Adjara to confront Georgia’s two breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. However, the signs are that taming these provinces will be far from painless – apart from anything else, most of their residents are Russian passport holders who do not want to ‘reintegrate’ with a country that waged an aggressive war against them in the early 1990s. On 3rd August 2004, Saakashvili threatened to attack Russian holiday makers in Abkhazia – on 31st July the situation was ratcheted up when a Turkish patrol boat was fired upon by a Georgian customs vessel.
If a figure so beloved as Shevardnadze can fall from favour is it not conceivable that Saakashvili too might be deposed? With both Iraq and Afghanistan in turmoil, the US may be unwilling to step in and pick up the pieces should there be any botched military adventures in the Caucasus. While many ordinary people in Georgia believed the propaganda proclaiming ‘Misha’ to be their saviour, others see this Mussolini-esque figure as an unpredictable menace. Should Saakashvili go, it is unlikely that his masters will admit their mistakes in choosing him to wield power in such a volatile region. As with Shevardnaze, his fan club will fade away only to reinvent itself for the next ‘made in Washington’ hero.
BHHRG representatives have followed events in Georgia closely over the past 9 months and observed all three elections, including the post-Abashidze poll held in Adjara held on 20th June. The following three reports compiled over the past year bring the story up to the point at which Saakashvili’s regime appeared ready to confront the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and reintegrate them into Georgia proper.
Pre-election Period
Brief History
Following the overthrow of Shevardnadze on 23rd November 2003, a three-person junta took power for the six-week period leading up to the snap presidential election called for the 4th January, 2004. The Speaker of Parliament, Nino Burjanadze, assumed the post of interim acting president while Zurab Zhvania was appointed Minister of State, in effect, the de facto premier in a country with no prime minister. Mikheil Saakashvili, leader of the National Movement, and the West’s anointed successor to Eduard Shevardnadze had already emerged as head of state, even prior to the coup. The disposition of the new triumvirate prompted Georgian Labour Party leader, Shalva Natelashvili, to remark on 3rd December, 2003 that: “Georgia has got rid of one Shevardnadze and got three of his destructive protégés in his place.”
The triumvirate of Burjanadze-Saakashvili-Zhvania quickly became known within Georgia as the “Troika,” an eery example of history repeating itself. When Georgian President Zviad Gamsakhurdia was overthrown in January 1992, he was also replaced by a triumvirate of politicians before Shevardnadze returned from Moscow to assume the reins of state in March that year. During the weeks prior to the 4th January 2004 election, the revolutionary Troika sacked ministers and regional governors.
A spokesman for the Georgian Labour Party said at a press conference during the day that, “what happened in Georgia was not a Rose Revolution but rather a coup involving transfer of power to heirs. Today our former president [Eduard Shevardnadze], who has in fact openly confirmed his support for Mikheil Saakashvili, has laid to rest the myth about the Rose Revolution which they have been offering us…”
The Bogus Candidates Take Their Positions
The interim Georgian leadership initially scheduled a new parliamentary election for 25th January 2004, but this was eventually postponed to March 28th 2004 after repeated protests from several opposition parties. 5 candidates stood for the presidential election set for 4th January 2004. On 19th December 2003, the Central Electoral Commission determined the order in which they were to appear on the ballot papers and after “drawing lots,” Mr. Saakashvili was coincidentally assigned number 5, the same number used by his National Movement party for the November parliamentary poll.
The order of candidates were as follows:
Roin Liparteliani, leader of the David the Builder Party;
Kartlos Gharibashvili, chairman of the Georgian Lawyers’ Association;
Zurab Kelekhsashvili, leader of the Victory Party;
Former Imereti Region Governor Temur Shashiashvili;
Mikheil Saakashvili, leader of the United National Movement; and
Zaza Sikharulidze, president of the Association of the Disabled.
Apart from Saakashvili, none of these candidates had any public recognition. Their pre-election campaigns received no proper media exposure - except for that of Saakashvili, although BHHRG’s representatives did see a TV news segment on election eve showing Mr. Ghabirashvili being interviewed for a few seconds. There were no election posters visible anywhere for anyone - except Mr. Saakashvili. In his case, posters from the November elections (all bearing the number 5 as well as his face even though he had not been a candidate in November) – were plastered around the capital, Tbilisi.
The other “candidates” did complain about the conduct of the campaign as did some media outlets. Radio Free Europe’s Liz Fuller was an unexpected critic: “Saakashvili’s challengers have complained to the CEC that he enjoys an unfair advantage over them, in that his activities as a member of the interim three-person leadership receive considerable media coverage …. free airtime they have been allocated for election broadcasts is at a time of day (between 1500 and 1700 local time) at which few people watch television.” On 25th December 2003, Imedi TV reported that Kartlos Gharibashvili had filed a suit against the head of Mikheil Saakashvili’s election campaign, Zurab Zhvania, for misusing election funds. “The whole State Chancellery and the whole state apparatus, as well as all local self-government and administrative bodies, are working for Mikheil Saakashvili. Zurab Zhvania has been terrorizing state and private television channels and other mass media sources and manipulating public opinion. Zurab Zhvania is threatening businessmen [and] intimidating people, officials and orders them to support his candidate,” said Gharibashvili. On 27th December, Imedi TV reported that another candidate, Zurab Kelekhsashvili, said he intended to protest the conspicuous support offered by the United States’ for Mikheil Saakashvili “We intend to stage a relevant protest action outside the Consulate-General of the United States of America,” said Kelekhsashvili.
On 30th December, Labour Party leader, Shalva Natelashvili made a public appeal for a boycott of the election “warning” that if United National Movement leader Mikheil Saakashvili won the election, millions of lari embezzled from the public would move from the hands of one clan into another. “Friends of this clan [Saakashvili’s] will return to government posts, deposits will not be returned, and pensions and salaries will not be paid,” said Natelashvili. “Healthcare and education systems will fall apart.” Natelashvili called on Georgians not to vote for former President Eduard Shevardnadze’s “adventurers.”
Needless to say, Saakashvili was promising economic nirvana to the hapless Georgian public with pledges to “increase pensions and the minimum monthly wage to between 100-150 laris ($46.4 - $69.6).” Perhaps it was no accident that the favourite refused to debate these and other proposals on TV with his presidential challengers. On 3rd January, Georgian State TV (Channel 1) broadcast the following statement by Saakashvili twelve hours before the polls opened and during the official election silence.
I am appealing to people who were not scared off by adverse weather conditions, snow and torrential rain and even bullets and reprisals and who took to the streets to defeat immorality. I am appealing to all those who have been supporting us in the recent days. I am appealing to the small part of the population who were in active opposition to what was happening in Georgia. Tomorrow is a crucial day for our country. Tomorrow, we should legitimize our victory in the eye of the whole world. We are given a possibility and a chance to begin an utterly new era in the history of Georgia tomorrow.
Indeed, everything cannot be improved in one go. But I can give you my word that the attitude of the authorities towards their own people will change completely. Instead of the weak one-man rule, we will get the collective rule of the Georgian people. My presidency will be the rule of each of you and the creation of strong government. We will create a situation where not only we ourselves do not steal but where others will not be allowed to steal and where ultimate order will be established throughout Georgia. [emphasis added]
Voting
BHHRG’s observers monitored the 4th January poll in Tbilisi, Rustavi and surrounding villages south of the capital. Throughout the day they gained the impression of a very low voter turnout. Polling stations seemed to be under-staffed and under-equipped with a general lack of organization and discipline. It was difficult to locate many of them as there were no identifying features, like the Georgian flag. Despite loud complaints about the veracity of the voter lists in the November election there was no sign of any effort having been made to improve the registers, which were mainly hand written. BHHRG’s observers also encountered the widespread use of additional voter lists, banned in 2003. The Group has long pointed out the unsatisfactory nature of using additional voter lists as they present golden opportunities for cheating. It has to be wondered why the new CEC in Tbilisi felt it necessary to revive a system so open to abuse.
The following examples are typical of BHHRG’s observations on the ground:
In Tbilisi, at Polling Station 32 in the District 3 the handwritten voter list contained 1,138 registered voters, but this time a supplementary list had been reintroduced, in contrast to 2nd November 2003. 449 had voted by 11:40 a.m., with 90 on the supplementary list.
In another polling station in District 3, in the Tbilisi Universal Bank, 300 had voted out of 1,185 registered voters, and 50 voters were on the supplementary list. The number of registered voters here had been reduced from 2,200 on 2nd November.
In Rustavi, in District 20, BHHRG was unable to find any polling stations because none had flags outside or indeed any external indication of their identity. Of the 14,296 registered to vote, roughly 4,000 were supplementary list voters – 28%. BHHRG’s representatives were told that if they had been there only two or three hours earlier it would have been “impossible to move” inside the polling stations because there were so many voters.
In Rustavi 1, located in the central theatre, the commission chairman did not know the number of her polling station. At 3:25, 700 had voted out of 1,008 registered, with 113 on the additional list and 21 mobile ballot box votes. BHHRG was told that two observers from Fair Elections were present (without their green fleece jackets of November) and that the OSCE had been there “all the time.” In November, the turnout had reportedly been 700 out of 1,500, although the chairman argued with BHHRG at first that this was not less than 50%.
In Rustavi 2, at 3:40, 820 were reported to have voted out of a total of 985 registered, with 210 of them supplementary list votes. In November, 1,832 were registered here, a decrease of almost 50%. In Rustavi 8, at 3:50, with more than 4 hours of voting left, 727 had voted out of a total of 726 registered, though only 160 were supplementary list voters (22%).
In Ponichala, in Polling Station 55, 800 had voted by 4:25 out of a total of 1,163 on the list. 138 were supplementary. Only two voters entered during the roughly twenty minutes BHHRG’s observers were present, even though BHHRG was expected to believe that between 12 noon and 4 p.m., 500 voters had been processed (i.e., a rate of 125 per hour, or over 2 per minute!).
In Polling Station 13 in Ktsanisky region, District 4, 850 had voted by 4:45 out of a total of 1,139 registered, with 120 on the supplementary list. In November, 1,990 had been registered, but BHHRG was told only 940 had voted. BHHRG remained in this polling station for almost 25 minutes and 3 voters entered during that time. BHHRG timed one voter from the time he entered to the time he put his ballot in the box, with no other voters in the polling station. The time was 3 minutes 15 seconds, making the 500 in 4 hours number seem a physical impossibility.
According to Adjara TV, turnout in the Georgian presidential election in Adjara was 25.5%. From what BHHRG could judge first hand from the number of voters actually visible throughout the day, turnout was no higher in the rest of Georgia.
Results
At 7 a.m. on 5th January, Georgian State TV , CEC Chairman Zurab Tchiaberashvili, former head of the Fair Elections NGO during the 2nd November 2003 election, reported that 1,738,790 voters were registered by 3rd January and another 391,035 voters had (supposedly) registered at polling stations on election day itself – a total of 2,129,825. Turnout at the election was therefore 83%.
At noon on Tuesday, 6th January, Georgia’s Prime news agency reported that Mikheil Saakashvili had been elected Georgian president, according to the latest results from the CEC. With roughly 52% (910,000) of the total number of ballots (1,761,936) counted, Saakashvili had received 97.5% of the vote, giving him an unassailable lead. Former Imereti Region Governor Temur Shashiashvili was reported in second place with 1.26%. However, for some reason the official result was not announced until 15th January.
According to the Fair Elections NGO, no major infringements or inaccuracies had been observed during the elections which they evaluated positively. The OSCE/EU Parliamentary Assembly/Council of Europe coordinated election observer mission also gave the poll high marks. They noted the “Commendable efforts to improve the voter lists” and found the turnout “unusually high”. In fact, the OSCE offered the same kind of endorsement it had given to the recently deposed Shevardnadze himself in 1992.
The Revolution Feels the Crunch
Less than two weeks after the ‘rose revolution’ the US reinforced its success in installing a proxy regime in Tbilisi by demanding the removal of Russian bases from Georgian territory. US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld appeared in Tbilisi and urged Russia to “fulfil its commitments under the Istanbul accords and withdraw its forces [from Georgia].” However, on 25th December, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov said during talks with Nino Burjanadze that it would take “at least 11 years” to withdraw the bases and reiterated that the Russian position on the issue had not changed. There were further signs of unwanted interference in the Caucasus when Boris Berezovsky (now an exile in the U.K.) made a surprise visit to Georgia on the night of 5th-6th December 2003. Georgian politician Alexander Chachia, co-chairman of the pro-Russian Ertoba (Unity) political party, suggested that the visit was linked to an escalation of Chechen rebel operations in Russia and Georgia. Chachia claimed that an informed source told him Berezovsky may have handed over money to Chechen rebels.
Promises of Western aid flowed in to the new regime. The British ambassador, Deborah Barnes-Jones, said that the U.K. would provide Georgia with $750,000 to cover the costs of the presidential election adding that she favoured broadening “business contacts” between the two countries and restoring regular flights from the UK to Georgia. However, British Airways flights between London and Tbilisi remained suspended in late summer 2004.. On the same day, in the Marriott Hotel in Tbilisi, officials of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and Georgian electricity distribution companies signed a memorandum on a “winter fuel aid program,” whereby over 230,000 socially vulnerable households throughout Georgia would receive 45-lari-worth (20 euros) of electricity free of charge for the winter. USAID allotted $6 million for the purpose, but because the programme was to cover many other regions of Georgia, in Tbilisi only the households that received fuel aid the previous winter would again receive it this year. No new households would be registered for winter fuel aid in the capital city.
As the Rose Revolution increasingly felt the economic squeeze a month after the coup, Bolshevik methods of collecting revenue were resorted to. On 23rd December, the Ministry of Justice’s bailiffs failed to seize 350 kg. of gold belonging to the Quartzite, Ltd. gold mining company, an enterprise with Australian investment that was under investigation by the Prosecutor's Office over allegations of illegally exporting gold. Investbank, in charge of safeguarding the gold, refused to open its vaults, because according to its regulations the bank was only allowed to open them in the presence of a special representative from the Finance Ministry and the owner of the gold itself. The Justice Ministry bailiffs were forced to leave the bank and apply to a court. A Georgian employee of Quartzite Ltd. told BHHRG that the company was very unhappy with the actions of the new regime, and was reconsidering its investment in Georgia. The following day, Rustavi-2 TV broadcast an interview with Mikheil Saakashvili, in which he explained that his newly proposed “tax on conspicuous consumption” was not “Bolshevik” in character.
Arrests:
Numerous officials from the former regime were arrested in the months following the ‘rose revolution’, a pattern that mirrored a similar crack down after Shevardnadze came to power.
For example:
Temur Khachishvili, Shevardnadze’s Interior Minister from 1992-3 was arrested on 25th April for the illegal possession of firearms.
Former audit chamber head, Sulkhan Molashvili arrested on 23rd April 2004 for “financial irregularities”
Vakhtang Chakhnashvili of the tax department arrested for “embezzlement”.
Many high profile suspects were released on payment of large sums of money to the authorities. For example, Shevardnadze’s son-in-law, Georgi Jokhtaberidze head of a local mobile phone company who had been arrested in February 2004 was released on 26th April after his wife paid the Georgian treasure more than $15m.” As ever the ‘populist’ Mr. Saakashvili said the money “would be used to pay pensions and salaries for teachers”.
Former Georgian Railways Director Akaki Chkhaidze, who was arrested in January on suspicion of tax evasion and abuse of his official position was released on bail on 31th March after providing a written pledge not to leave Tbilisi, Georgian media reported. Chkhaidze, a close associate of former President Eduard Shevardnadze,
reportedly paid 3 million laris ($1.49 million) to the state budget. LF
On 12th March Vasili Mkalavishvili a wayward priest accused of persecuting Jehovah’s Witnesses and other Protestant sects was arrested in Tbilisi. It took 100 riot police with batons and tear gas to apprehend Mkalavishvili and 20 of his followers, including several children, were injured in the process. Despite this, the US Congressional Helsinki Commission Chairman, Christopher Smith “welcomed the priest’s arrest” and praised Mr. Saakashvili for bringing it about. Yet again, American politicians seemed happy to ignore their own rules relating to the separation of powers whereby a country’s legal apparatus rather than its politicians are responsible for the arrest and incarceration of suspects. However, Mkalavishvili himself seemed to have got the point: “Georgia does not exist right now” he is reported as saying “It is only another US state whose government is George Soros”.
Media Under Attack
There was also criticism of the increasing attacks on freedom of expression. RFE interviewed Zviad Pochkhua, chairman of the Independent Association of Georgian Journalists and the editor in chief of the Tbilisi-based Georgian Times who said: "The government is openly exerting pressure on journalists, threatening to close down some media organizations. A few days ago, the house of Luba Eliashvili, an anchorwoman who works with the [Iberia] television station, was riddled with bullets. Some media organizations have received threats. Those include the Interpress news agency, which was threatened with closure. Two popular talk shows were terminated on the Mze and Rustavi-2 television stations. We said this was a direct interference on the part of the government, which does not want to hear any criticism and seeks to muzzle press freedom. A few days ago, someone threw a big knife through one of my windows, and I took this as a warning,"
BHHRG met Zviad Pochkhua in the run up to the January 2004 poll. The Georgian Times newspaper is an English-language publication that had received grants from foreign organizations, including the Soros Foundation. The paper had predicted the coup scenario a year ago and, Pochkhua said “6 months ago we started to have problems with the US Embassy and Soros”. “We had received documents stating that the NDI, IRI and Soros were providing financial backing for a coup. A few organizations financed Kmara and one member of the Former Political Prisoners for Human Rights (FPPHR), Nana Kakabadze, refused to participate and gave us a big interview about where the money was coming from, propaganda, and so forth. For us, the idea of a coup was unconstitutional – just like the coup in 1991 [against Gamskahurdia]. People were coming to power unconstitutionally and the US Embassy refused to comment, the Soros office refused on 10 occasions while the regime started discrediting us.”
The Georgian Times has established some contacts with international organizations, claimed Pockhua, notably the Nixon Center, which granted the paper an interview in 2002. The Nixon Center reportedly told The Georgian Times that the only guarantor of stability in the Caucasus was Shevardnadze, and conveyed to them the impression that Shevardnadze was wanted by US. Then, said Pochkhua, the situation suddenly changed.
“[CEC Chairman] Zurab Tchiaberishvili was once my friend, but then the Liberty Institute started to ignore us completely,” laments Pochkhua. “The Third Sector is 80% controlled by the regime, and they are now blocking all opposition television. Big money was spent on [TV stations] 24 Hours, Rustavi-2 TV, and others. Rustavi-2 General Director Eros Kitsmarishvili admitted that they participated and got money. I am Chairman of the Association of Journalists and a member of the International Federation of Journalists. We contacted the IFJ and told them the papers in Georgia were being bought up, that they were no longer independent.” Pochkhua says that although he pays dues to the IFJ for membership, he has never received a single benefit. “We are now the only opposition paper in Georgia. They have closed all avenues to financing. As soon as we started reporting information received from other countries, they turned against us.”
On 2nd August, 2004 the International Press Institute in Vienna officially complained to Saakashvili about further harassment of Pochkhua and the Georgian Times. The paper was raided on 14th July after it published articles “questioning the origin of assets belonging to the chief prosecutor…”
The human rights situation after the Rose Revolution has not, as yet, improved. There have been reports of detained persons having heart attacks under interrogation, and even NGOs previously blatantly sympathetic to Mr. Saakashvili had already started to speak out about the excessive actions of the new regime. The Liberty Institute, from which CEC Chairman Tchiaberashvili hails, expressed outrage on 20th January over police brutality, and Liberty Institute representative Gia Bokeria said recent incidents involving excessive use of force by the police were “appalling” and cast doubts on the “strengthening of liberal democracy in Georgia.” Bokeria listed incidents such as the vicious beating of a crime boss, Koba Shemazashvili, by the police in Rustavi and the detention of Shemazashvili’s supporters under inhuman conditions. The accused kidnappers of Tamaz Maghlakelidze, a banker, were also severely beaten by the police, and one prisoner, Gia Inasaridze, committed suicide in his prison cell on 18th December 2003.
Sadly, of course, Bokeria could be relied upon to sum up with a few words of apology for the new regime, suggesting (inevitably) that more “reform” was the key: “We support the fight against organized crime but it should not be carried out by unlawful methods. So, reforms of the law-enforcement agencies are necessary.” With regard to frequent statements being made by Internal Affairs Minister Giorgi Baramidze and Prosecutor-General Irakli Okruashvili – such as “we will destroy,” “we will kill,” or “we will smash them into pieces” – Bokeria said he was not alarmed. “These are the usual methods of strong authorities. It is all right, even though there is a temptation that the new authorities may also relax and choose to take an easy path.” One has to assume the Liberty Institute ultimately has no illusions about which side of its bread the butter is on.
As Georgians watch their state collapse further, and their territory transformed into a transit corridor for energy transported west, the threat of renewed war still forms the backdrop of day-to-day life. On 27th January, Adjaran leader Aslan Abashidze perhaps summed up the mood in the republic when he made the following, sombre prediction:
I can see that the same is being planned [in Adjara] as in Abkhazia and Ossetia. There will be casualties, Georgia will remain fragmented, suffering will befall the land and the people, and there will be wounds that will not heal.
Parliamentary Elections, 28th March, 2004
Executive Summary
The special re-run of the proportional representation part of the Georgian parliamentary elections held on 28th March, 2004, marked a further step back from fair and honest elections. The Georgian Central Election Commission imposed the easily manipulable system of hand-written voters registers on Adjara as well as in the rest of Georgia, enabling officials to register large percentages of voters on polling day. Despite praise from the OSCE and European Parliament delegations for the conduct of the 28th March vote, their criticisms of last November’s poll would have been much more appropriate if directed at this election.
Evidence of bias by key election figures and the interference of the President of Georgia and his prime minister on election day and during the count afterwards render the official results unreliable. President Saakashvili announced within minutes of the closing of the polls that his National Movement had won 100% of the seats! Then negotiations involving power-brokers from inside and outside Georgia - misleadingly called the final tabulation of results - adjusted this absurdly lopsided result and allowed one other party with good US connections to creep over the 7% threshold into the parliament.
Georgia now has an absolute presidential majority in its national parliament. In the 1990s flawed and dishonest elections complacently endorsed by the West left no peaceful or parliamentary way for regime change. Similar risks of a renewed cycle of assassination and coup attempts will stalk Georgia in the near future.
Although President Saakashvili was able to suppress Adjara’s autonomy in May, 2004, with backing from players in both the US and Russia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia remain defiant. Georgia is going full circle from the universal applause which greeted Shevardnadze’s seizure of power in 1992 to the equally unanimous endorsement of the so-called “rose revolution” last November. President Saakashvili’s belligerent approach to regional tensions is ominously reminiscent of the disastrous wars initiated by Shevardnadze in 1992.
BHHRG’s representatives have observed every Georgian presidential and parliamentary election since 1992 giving them an experience unmatched by the members of any other observer mission. They organised their own observation of the voting on 28th March and at the Adjaran Supreme Soviet elections on 20th June, 2004.
Introduction
On 28th March, 2004, Georgia re-ran the proportional representation part of the disputed parliamentary elections from November, 2003. No adequate explanation was ever offered by Georgian officials for re-running only the proportional representation part of that poll. Why should corrupt and fraudulent officials have miscounted only the PR votes while accurately and honestly recording the results in single member constituencies? In all the hullabaloo about the so-called “Rose Revolution” and Georgia’s alleged fresh start after the fall of Eduard Shevardnadze and the installation of Mikheil Saakashvili, election observers and academics ceased to think critically or intelligently about what was taking place before their eyes in Georgia. However, as Western officials have routinely suspended their critical faculties when confronted by events in the country it was unsurprising that the OSCE and Council of Europe’s accepted only partial re-runs.
In practice, many of the victors in the single member constituencies in November, 2003, were powerful local figures, men with patronage, or, to be frank, mafia figures with whom the new regime could cooperate as their predecessors had always done. After all, such people could afford to pay to keep their posts in parliament, or threaten them if they tried to remove them against their will. However, the new regime needed more supporters in parliament because its showing in the November poll was well below its much trumpeted universal popularity.
President Abashidze photographed in Batumi before the 28th March parliamentary poll
The south-western autonomous region of Adjara was the key battleground in the March 2004 elections. Adjara had never declared independence nor had its regional president, Aslan Abashidze, ever threatened to do so. Mr. Abashidze and his Democratic Revival Union promoted Adjara as the only region of Georgia to avoid both civil war and disorder of the sort which had afflicted other parts of the country (along with mafia violence).
Key Saakashvili allies like Zurab Tchiuberashvili, had denounced the conduct of the November 2003 poll in Adjara with particular vehemence. Aslan Abashidze’s Revivial Party had been the largest nation-wide opposition party to both Shevardnadze’s regime and now to Saakashvili. It was the only party to have had a continuous history since the restoration of Georgian independence in 1991. Destroying Abashidze’s power-base was central to Saakashvili’s project to assert himself as the only “strongman” in Georgia.
Throughout the early months of 2004, there was a tug of war between Tbilisi and Batumi as the new regime set about undermining Abashidze’s position in Adjara. Alternately, demands were made for “legality” and “loyalty” towards the new central government accompanied by threats of military intervention as Saakashvili’s regime probed the strength of Abashidze’s position. Local backers in the new regime’s “Our Adjara” movement engaged in acts designed to provoke and challenge the Adjaran authorities.
Even prior to his formal swearing-in as head of state, Mr. Saakashvili had warned that he would demonstrate the central government’s ability to “control” all the regions of Georgia. On 16th January 2004, Rustavi-2 TV showed President-elect Saakashvili commenting on the detention of former Georgian Railways chief Akaki Chkheidze, arrested in Batumi in the early morning:
I had repeatedly warned the Adjaran leadership that I would not tolerate the use of any part of Georgian territory as a shelter for wanted persons. Maybe some people thought we were joking… We will get everyone… I had a special-purpose detachment on standby here, which was ready to be deployed in Batumi.
Adjaran officials told BHHRG that there had never been any attempt to “shelter” Mr. Chkheidze, and that the ex-railways minister had come to Adjara for heart treatment only, making the “spectacular operation” by the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) something of a “Jessica Lynch” story.
On 18th January, the semi-official Rustavi-2 TV station reported that an Adjaran MVD official, Temur Inaishvili, had been found shot dead in Memed Abashidze Avenue in the centre of Batumi. “Our Adjara” claimed that Inaishvili had openly expressed his sympathies towards the Movement, and that the Inaishvilis were open supporters of President-elect Mikheil Saakashvili. The obvious implication was that supporters of the President were being murdered in Batumi by his opponents there.
On 22nd January, Imedi broadcast an interview with Saakashvili in Davos, Switzerland, where he was attending an economic summit in the company of George Soros and other Western dignitaries. The President announced that he would visit Batumi on his inauguration day (25th January) and inspect a military parade. The next day, he received words of support for his “control” statements from Georgia’s Orthodox Patriarch, Ilya II. The Patriarch’s career has been marked by craven adherence to each successive regime in Georgia from Brezhnev to Shevardnadze so it was no surprise that he put his moral authority behind the new president. Ilya II declared, “A five-cross flag has become the state standard of Georgia and it was blessed today. It means that Georgia will be victorious and with this flag, Georgia will soon enter Abkhazia and Tskhinvali [capital of South Ossetia].”
The itinerary for the 25th January inauguration ceremonies involved several military parades around Georgia, including Adjara then Saakashvili took the presidential oath at the grave of a 12th c. Georgian king, David the Builder, after which Patriarch Ilya II blessed him at the Gelati monastery. The swearing-in itself took place in Tbilisi at 3 p.m. followed by more military parades. In the evening, open-air rock concerts were staged for the youth of the new Georgia.
Rumours surfaced that troops from the Poti garrison north of Adjara, a force of 1,500 men, were to be brought to Batumi for the parade. The Pentagon had reportedly given Georgia 77 pieces of heavy military equipment unloaded at Poti by an American ship on 12th January, some of which was provided under America’s “Train & Equip” Programme for Georgia . Saakashvili held a closed-door meeting with US Assistant Secretary of State Lynn Pascoe on 13th January, after which it was announced that the US had agreed to allocate $3 million for salaries to be paid to people involved in the Programme. The US billionaire, George Soros, had also announced his willingness to fund the salaries of many Georgian government officials.
In fact, Saakashvili’s inauguration day visit to Batumi passed off without serious incident but it was an assertion of his capacity to force Abashidze to climb down. A state of emergency imposed after the ‘rose revolution’ was dropped in advance of the January poll. However, an atmosphere of tension remained.
Adjara reaches out to the West
After November 2003, Abashidze began a series of trips abroad to alert foreign leaders about the danger of Georgian central government forces invading his region. He also visited Moscow on several occasions to seek support against what he viewed as the threat of invasion by the new regime in Tbilisi. Because Adjara was host to one of two Russian bases remaining in Georgia, the region was conspicuous as an outpost of independence from eastward-pushing NATO, which would admit six ex-Soviet bloc states in a matter of months. Bruce Jackson, head of the NATO-expansion lobby group, the Project on Transitional Democracies, and founder of the US Committee on NATO, came to Batumi after Abashidze’s return from Moscow to talk to the Adjaran leader and to explain that the region had much further to go in developing “civil society.”
Abashidze also travelled to Strasbourg in late January 2004, and warned Council of Europe (CoE) Secretary General, Walter Schwimmer, that Saakashvili was planning various provocative acts in Adjara under the guise of celebrating his inauguration. Schwimmer responded that Saakashvili should be forgiven his “youthful enthusiasm”. Abashidze also seems to have put some hope in the influence of a Danish businessman, Jan Bonde Nielsen, who was the single largest foreign investor in Adjara owning a controlling stake in the Batumi oil terminal. Mr Bonde Nielsen had had a colourful career in Denmark before moving to Britain in the 1980s - he still operates his businesses from London today. Rumours were already circulating by this point that Bonde Nielsen, whose connections in the Russian government were reportedly very solid, was negotiating with George Soros over Adjara’s future. Mr Soros had given very public backing to the “Rose Revolution.” Certainly, according to the Copenhagen Post, Mr Bonde Nielsen’s business interests in Adjara strengthened after the downfall of Aslan Abashidze in May, 2004, the man who had been his original political sponsor in Batumi.
Abashidze also facilitated several PR junkets for foreign journalists with the intention of showing the world the ‘real’ Adjara compared with the received wisdom that painted it as a backward, dictatorial state. Motley groups which included some senior journalists as well as minor scribblers descended on Batumi in February and March 2004, many unaware of where they were or why they were there. Inevitably, this ill-thought-out scheme back-fired as returning hacks re-paid the piper by not, as it were, singing the tune. Unflattering articles appeared in the Western media about both Abashidze himself and Adjara. Of course, most of the journalists on these trips had never visited the Caucasus so were unable to appreciate the fact that while Adjara itself was poor and run down, compared with Georgia itself, it was a veritable paradise.
Endorsement from Our Patron
While Aslan Abashidze tried to make friends in the West and influence the power-brokers there, Western leaders and ambassadors made their countries’ support for the new regime in Tbilisi clear.
On the day of the re-run parliamentary elections, in case, Georgian voters were in any doubt about how the “international community” wanted them to vote, Rustavi 2 and other Georgian television channels repeatedly showed a sequence of the U.S. ambassador, Richard Miles, visiting a polling station in Tbilisi. Mr. Miles was shown beaming and making positive comments about the proceedings after being presented with a bunch of red roses which were in view at the bottom right-hand side of the screen. From any other source this would have been denounced as brazen, un-diplomatic interference. But, maybe it turned out to be a democracy-promotion too far as Saakashvili’s supporters took it as an endorsement of their grab for all the seats up for election. On the whole, on his previous assignments in the Balkans (Bulgaria and Serbia), Mr. Miles has witnessed managed elections which endorsed the pro-American forces brought to power by the street but with a fig-leaf of pluralism. In Georgia his protégés seemed bent on a winner takes all approach to proportional representation.
Along with other Western diplomats, Mr Miles apparently attended an eve of poll reception given by President Saakashvili to which the only Georgians invited were supporters of his own National Movement. Aslan Abashidze, told an eve of poll press conference in Batumi that “The Georgian government cannot do anything without Richard Miles’s permission. [It] cannot escalate the situation without his say-so.”
On election day itself, Georgian television stations showed extensive coverage of Mr. Saakashvili voting and making political statements. They also showed many ordinary voters expressing their enthusiasm for the changes initiated by the new president. Even prisoners in the notoriously squalid Tbilisi Isolator were shown poking their heads through the grills of their cells to proclaim their intention of voting the right way!
One sour note for Mr Saakashvili during the polling was Imedi TV’s broadcast of the text of a New York Times article by Seth Mydans headlined, “ Georgians Anxiously Watch New Leader” which suggested that the new President’s hectoring style and arbitrary manner wasn’t going down as well with all Georgians as his official popularity suggested.
According to Adjaran officials, the size of the region’s electorate hovered around 280,000, but some in Tbilisi claimed the real number was closer to 100,000. The CEC scrapped the official figures produced by the Adjarans’ census conducted prior to the November 2003 election and began the registration process from scratch. A huge proportion of supplementary list voters (supplementary lists were abolished for the November 2003 elections, but reintroduced in January 2004) resulted from the refusal of the Central Election Commission in Tbilisi – under former “Fair Elections” chief Zurab Chiaberashvili – to provide registration forms to voters in Adjara in reasonable time. The Adjarans claimed that the requested “pink slips” (registration forms) were received only on the day of the deadline (21st March) making it physically impossible for them to be distributed, filled out, and returned before cut-off time. This indicated a coordinated campaign by Tbilisi to disenfranchise Adjaran voters and keep the number of votes counted from the autonomous republic – as a proportion of the total nationwide – artificially low. The CEC in Tbilisi soon announced that Batumi had fallen to the National Movement, and that it was annulling results from Kobuleti and Khulo, Adjara’s second and third largest cities, and scheduling new elections there. The Adjaran authorities refused to hold repeat elections in these districts, and tensions with Tbilisi increased.
Polling Day
By 28th March, 2004, the conduct of the poll in Adjara had reverted to Georgian norms. Gone were the photo-IDs and computerised registration of the previous year. In had come hand-written and incomplete lists of voters.
Since the number of voters in Adjara had been made into a highly politicised issue, the refusal of the CEC in Tbilisi to provide as many registration forms as those requested by the local authorities was a political as much as an administrative decision. President Abashidze claimed at his eve of poll press conference that the total electorate should have been in the range of 276,000 voters but that the CEC had deflated the number to about 180,000. Various figures were bandied about in discussions between the Group’s observers and local politicians, NGO representatives and election officials. The very lack of clarity was worrying. It indicated the possibility that registration was being politicised.
Throughout the day, the BHHRG observers found relatively low turnouts despite the sharp deflation of the registered number of voters but quite high numbers of additional voters added to the register by hand, between 10-15% of the turnout. In those polling stations which had been used in previous polls, officials routinely reported that about half the actual number of qualified adults had been registered by polling day compared with the number registered in the same place six months earlier. The provision of an additional list made it possible for real voters to be added to the poll, but of course anyone in possession of valid documents could also be added making it possible for the turnout to be inflated by bogus voters. It is impossible to say what really happened, but that was precisely why Adjara’s previous use of printed lists and visual identification was better than the system imported from the rest of Georgia.
For instance, at Batumi No. 4 the observers found that 524 people were listed at a polling station that had previously had 1,100. Already an additional 20 names had been added to a turnout of only 114 by 10.30am. At Batumi station No. 3, 535 voters were registered with 75 additional names added by mid-afternoon. At the city’s Fine Arts Institute, 538 voters were registered, with 131 on the additional list and 40 in a mobile box used by those too unwell to come in person.
Polling station No. 50 was a sanatorium for refugees from Abkhazia. More than 1,000 people were entitled to vote there. The presence of many refugees from Abkhazia helps to explain why the government in Batumi insisted that there were more eligible voters in Adjara than the CEC in Tbilisi wanted to allow. As Georgian citizens resident in the region since their expulsion from Abkhazia more than a decade ago, the refugees met the criteria for registration.
Who observes the Observers?Polling Day
By 28th March, 2004, the conduct of the poll in Adjara had reverted to Georgian norms. Gone were the photo-IDs and computerised registration of the previous year. In had come hand-written and incomplete lists of voters.
Since the number of voters in Adjara had been made into a highly politicised issue, the refusal of the CEC in Tbilisi to provide as many registration forms as those requested by the local authorities was a political as much as an administrative decision. President Abashidze claimed at his eve of poll press conference that the total electorate should have been in the range of 276,000 voters but that the CEC had deflated the number to about 180,000. Various figures were bandied about in discussions between the Group’s observers and local politicians, NGO representatives and election officials. The very lack of clarity was worrying. It indicated the possibility that registration was being politicised.
Throughout the day, the BHHRG observers found relatively low turnouts despite the sharp deflation of the registered number of voters but quite high numbers of additional voters added to the register by hand, between 10-15% of the turnout. In those polling stations which had been used in previous polls, officials routinely reported that about half the actual number of qualified adults had been registered by polling day compared with the number registered in the same place six months earlier. The provision of an additional list made it possible for real voters to be added to the poll, but of course anyone in possession of valid documents could also be added making it possible for the turnout to be inflated by bogus voters. It is impossible to say what really happened, but that was precisely why Adjara’s previous use of printed lists and visual identification was better than the system imported from the rest of Georgia.
For instance, at Batumi No. 4 the observers found that 524 people were listed at a polling station that had previously had 1,100. Already an additional 20 names had been added to a turnout of only 114 by 10.30am. At Batumi station No. 3, 535 voters were registered with 75 additional names added by mid-afternoon. At the city’s Fine Arts Institute, 538 voters were registered, with 131 on the additional list and 40 in a mobile box used by those too unwell to come in person.
Polling station No. 50 was a sanatorium for refugees from Abkhazia. More than 1,000 people were entitled to vote there. The presence of many refugees from Abkhazia helps to explain why the government in Batumi insisted that there were more eligible voters in Adjara than the CEC in Tbilisi wanted to allow. As Georgian citizens resident in the region since their expulsion from Abkhazia more than a decade ago, the refugees met the criteria for registration.
The green-jacketed members of Fair Elections organization were present at every polling station visited in and around Batumi. This NGO was never the modest citizens’ group it purported to be. As BHHRG’s report on the November, 2003, elections revealed it was lavishly funded by Western governments, especially by the British and Dutch taxpayers. This meant that Fair Elections was not really an NGO but rather a foreign-funded ‘non-governmental’ organisation (FANGO). By March, 2004, with the full-backing of the Saakashvili regime, Fair Elections had gone even further down the line from election observation to enforcement.
It was striking how often the Green Jackets were not only in the voting room but also in the back office even before any count was underway and while protocols of the results were being prepared. They seemed to be running the operation. In the Batumi district election commission’s office members of the DEC said that they could not talk in the absence of their green-jacketed minder, but later relented to answer innocuous statistical queries. One BHHRG observer who had been in Georgia to observe the 1992 parliamentary elections thought that the green-jacketed observers resembled a house-trained version of the black leather-jacketed Mkhedrioni who performed a similar function supervising the election officials and voters twelve years ago despite having no official status.
It was striking that none of the observers, green-jacketed or otherwise, had any complaints about the proceedings on 28th March. Sometimes, Revival Party members of the election commissions appeared tense or uncomfortable as they answered questions under the watchful gaze of Fair Elections observers but no-one gave any examples of irregularities.
This failure to allege irregularity was all the more striking for two reasons:
1) Tbilisi- based television stations carried reports throughout the afternoon and evening from figures like Tchuberashvili, and other supporters of the National Movement claiming that Adjara was witnessing a wave of violence and electoral fraud.
2) In fact, BHHRG’s observers thought that the election procedures in Adjara compared badly with the conduct of the voting there in November, 2003, - though not for the reasons alleged in National Movement propaganda. At that time, printed election registers were universal and voters could be identified by checking their ID cards with a computerised list of registered voters which included a photographic register on the laptop computer provided to each polling station. Elsewhere in Georgia, registers were hand-written. Confusion or deception over the voter lists was the key alleged reason for denouncing those elections and initiating the seizure of power by Mikheil Saakashvili and the mob on 23rd November, 2003.
Given that the green-jacketed Fair Elections observers were, in practice, running many polling stations - e.g. in Batumi No. 3 four of them controlled the back office of the polling station with its documentation, ballot papers and official stamps - it would have required them to denounce themselves or their comrades had they criticised the conduct of the poll.
Yet, despite the much-repeated concern about electoral registers the previous November, on 28th March, Georgia took a step back when the flawed procedures typical of the worst days of the Shevardnadze era were extended to Adjara as well as being used in the rest of Georgia.
Partisan activity by anyone present in or near polling stations was illegal, but in practice many election officials wore lapel badges in the national colours which are also the colours of Mr Saakashvili’s own political party. The display of party symbols in polling stations and certainly by polling officials was banned but no-one in authority seemed to mind that the President’s favourite flag was displayed in all the polling stations. In some polling stations TVs broadcast Mr. Saakashvili’s pronouncements and those of people like Mr Tchiuberashvili during the day which could easily have affected voters’ behaviour.
In the afternoon of 28th March a convoy of heavily-armoured, black civilian humvees and other armour-plated limousines accompanied the Georgian premier, Zurab Zhvania to Batumi. Zhvania’s visit may have been, in part, a reflection of a power struggle among the new regime in Tbilisi. The younger generation of radicals seemed to want to promote confrontation. Maybe the prime minister was anxious to keep the situation under control. His position in the new regime was also at stake. As a representative of Shevardnadze’s administrative apparatus for so many years, he might have felt threatened if the thirty-somethings around Saakashvili no longer needed him in high office.
Other explanations for Zhvania’s arrival in Batumi circulated on the streets. Because of rumours about a shortage of ballot papers - something which was unlikely given the low turnout - many Adjarans believed reports that the prime minister had brought 50,000 ballot papers with him in his convoy from Tbilisi. Even if this were true it was clearly a breach of the independence of the central election commission for a politician to convey electoral materials around the country.
It seems that Zhvania came to Batumi to arrange the results. Even as he was ensconced with Mr. Abashidze in the president’s office in Batumi when the polls closed, Saakashvili was proclaiming a clean sweep for his supporters across the country. The President’s exuberant dismissal of the need for any opposition candidates to be elected if Georgia was to retain a reputation for democracy posed problems on the ground, not least in Adjara where both turnout and division of the votes was as yet unknown.
Early on 29th March Zhvania told reporters in Batumi that: "On the whole, the elections have been held in a normal atmosphere in Ajaria." This contrasted sharply with the denunciation of the conduct of the polls there by CEC Chairman Tchiuberashvili.
BHHRG observers went to Kobuleti on the day after the poll to investigate whether the disorders alleged by Mr. Tchiuberashvili.had taken place. Whatever had been reported to the CEC chairman in Tbilisi, local people had no memory of troubles the day before.
Whatever was discussed between Zhvania and Abashidze and whatever was brought from Tbilisi in his convoy, Zhvania’s intervention was typical of the political interference on polling day and in the procedure for tabulating the results which disfigured the re-run elections in Georgia. Yet the OSCE’s observers saw nothing wrong and Western embassies congratulated the President on his democratic triumph - as once they had his disgraced predecessor.
Rustavi 2 Television continued to act as a quasi-state broadcaster releasing its own exit poll minutes after the voting ended at 8pm. According to Rustavi, Saakashvili’s National Movement had won 76.8% of the vote with none of the other 18 parties on the ballot paper expected to cross the 7% threshold for seats in parliament. Half an hour later, President Saakashvili jubilantly told Georgian television viewers that his party had won 100% of the seats. Western news agencies and broadcasters like the BBC hurried to retail this news as fact and to celebrate another “triumph”, as the BBC World Service called it, for the pro-democracy forces.
In fact, earlier that day, at 3.10 pm, Georgian TV had broadcast Saakashvili (speaking in English) stating that it would be no problem if his National Movement won all seats up for election that day because “we have already representatives of five opposition parties in parliament”- referring, presumably, to the affiliations of the majoritarian members. In other words, enough opposition was enough in the eyes of Mr. Saakashvili. Little wonder that he announced a clean sweep so soon after the close of the polls - he had been broadcasting his prediction of that outcome throughout polling day.
Even allowing for his characteristic exuberance, how could President Saakashvili be so certain of the results as c. 4.30pm the next day the CEC admitted that only 10% of the votes had been counted! In other words, President Saakashvili who had come to power on the back of denouncing his predecessor for interfering in the electoral process was doing much the same himself. After all, how many members of local election commissions in Georgia would wish to produce results contradicting the declarations of their “popular” president? In other countries where politicians have pre-empted the official results in this way the OSCE has had no scruples about condemning them and calling for re-runs. In this case, the OSCE observer mission was happy with the results declared by Saakashvili and raised no qualms about his statement.
In fact, the results were to change as the days of counting went on. But these changes probably reflected less any concern about how Georgian citizens had actually cast their ballots than political pressures on the Saakashvili camp to back away from its 100% victory.
In fact, the official result was 12% lower than Rustavi’s exit poll. Back in November, 2003, the difference between the exit poll (26.6%) for Saakashvili’s National Movement and the then CEC’s official figure (18.08%) was only 8%, but that mismatch was enough to justify a revolution! But no indignant demonstrations followed the downgrading of the National Movement’s projected result. Of course by now it was in power and the actual results were subject to a negotiation among members of the elite.
The New Rights Party had excellent connections in the U.S. exemplified by articles written by its spokesman, Irakli Areshidze, in newspapers like the Wall Street Journal. It was not going to be denied seats in parliament and its leader David Gamkrlidze’s statement after the close of the polls made alarming allegations (ignored by the OSCE and Council of Europe observers in their published statements but probably known to them). Gamkrlidze declared, ““Our principle task tonight and tomorrow will be to protect the votes that we received—to ensure that the precinct-level protocols reflect the true vote count, and that the district-level protocols reflect the precinct protocols. This will be a difficult task given the pressure that the government officials are putting on PEC and DEC members. At the same time, there are clear indications of attempts by the governmental members of the electoral commissions to increase the turnout which was very low.” [Emphasis added]
Back in November, 2003, the OSCE’s report had condemned the alleged “negotiating of results” as one of the key flaws in those proceedings but in March, 2004, this malpractice continued and was ignored by the OSCE’s watchdogs . By 31st March, according to Interfax, the Georgian Central Elections Commission’s early confidence in a Saakashvili whitewash gave way when it published interim results: “The counting shows that the United National Movement - Democrats received 67.2% of the vote, the Rightwingers - Industrialists 7.6%, the Democratic Revival Union 6.1%, and the Labour Party 5.7%. With these results, only two parties have so far surpassed the 7% threshold required to be represented in parliament.” But it went on to quote the CEC Chairman, Zurab Tchiaberashvili, "These results could change, as the elections at many polling stations will be annulled." Results in Georgia remained fluid.
The implications for Adjara were spelled out in a Reuters report on 29th March which made clear that Revival would not win any seats. It quoted Matyas Eőrsi, the head of the European Parliament’s monitors, "Based on yesterday's poll in Adzhara I can tell you that the only chance of political survival for the (local) government is to change their attitude and be much more democratic." In other words, when Saakashvili won 100% of the seats as it appeared then, that was wholly democratic but if Revival had won a similar percentage of the votes in the past that was NOT democratic by the dialectical reasoning of Mr Eorsi.
According to his curriculum vitae on the European Parliament’s home page, Mr. Eőrsi was born in 1954 but like so many vocal democrats from the former Communist bloc, life began for him only in 1990 at least that is when the university-educated lawyer (graduated 1979) lists the first reference to any job - as an activist in the post-Communist SZDSZ party (Hungary’s Free Democrats, junior partner of the ex-Communist Socialist Party).
Mr. Eőrsi’s last visit to Georgia was under the Shevardnadze regime when he was a victim of the despot’s bad manners. Apparently “the visit of a monitoring group of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which arrived in Tbilisi last night, began with a scandal. No officials came to meet the PACE rapporteurs, Bulgaria's Yevgeny Kirilev and Hungary's Matyas Eőrsi” Worse was to follow this indignity.” According to Tbilisi's Rustavi-2 TV channel, “the two officials found themselves all alone at the airport and were forced to deliver a lengthy explanation to airport employees and then pay for their services.” Kirilev denounced this slight as “unprecedented”. Indeed, no doubt official observers cannot imagine the world of other observers who routinely make their own arrangements, take taxis and pay for services!
CEC chairman, Tchiuberashvili upped the pressure on Adjara. On 16th April, it was reported that the re-run of the elections in Khulo and Koboleti had been cancelled at two days notice. “All responsibility for this lies with the local Adzharan leadership," he told reporters. But the Adjaran authorities countered by claiming “the results were only cancelled because Abashidze's party, which failed to enter parliament, recorded its best showing in those regions.”
Final results across the country produced an absurdly high turnout of 82%! That was 1.9 million out of 2.3 million officially registered voters. According to the CEC’s spokesman, only two parties passed the 7% threshold. The National Movement-Democrats polled 66.24% of the vote giving them 135 of the 150 party lists seats. The Industrialists-New Rightists, who polled 7.56%, won the remaining 15 seats, giving the two parties a total of 152 and 23 seats, respectively. Officially, the anti-Saakashvili Labour Party received 6.1%; the Tavisupleba bloc headed by Konstantin Gamsakhurdia, son of deceased President Zviad Gamsakhurdia 4.39%; and the Union for Democratic Revival (DAK) headed by Adjar Supreme Council Chairman Abashidze 3.86%. Both Natiashvili’s Labour Party and Abashidze’s Revival protested that the results were falsified. Natiashvili’s supporters demonstrated in Tbilisi as they had done after the official results for Saakashvili’s election in January were declared, but no foreign missions paid them any attention.
On 26th April, the Georgian Supreme Court rejected Labour Party claims that the official results were manipulated despite the clear evidence of the CEC issuing contradictory and changing figures, and of political interference in the tabulation of results.
Tchiuberashvili was rewarded for his service by being named mayor of Tbilisi by Saakashvili on 20th April, 2004. In the democratic wonderland of Georgia, the mayoralty of the capital city is, naturally, not elected but in the gift of the president.
Tensions between Saakashvili’s regime and the Adjaran authorities continued after 28th March. The President announced his intention of ending “feudal enclaves” inside Georgia clearly implying that Adjara was the first target of his “re-integration” mission. Furthermore, on 2nd April, the Georgian authorities announced the arrest of Adjaran “plotters” alleged to be conspiring to kill the President on the orders of senior security officials in Batumi. These charges were just the beginning of a ratcheting up of tension after Mr. Abashidze had agreed to take part in the March elections. That pressure would increase over the next five weeks until Adjara had been brought under central government control.
On 24th April, Abashidze declared a state of emergency in the autonomous region after President Saakashvili threatened to send in his troops during a speech to a televised parade of Georgian participants in the “Train and Equip programme”.
The Fall of Aslan Abashidze
The anti-Abashidze rhetoric became more bellicose in April when Maj.-Gen. Roman Dumbadze, commander of Georgia’s 25th Armoured-Mechanized Brigade, based in Batumi, declared his allegiance to Abashidze. Dumbadze had been dismissed by the Georgian Ministry of Defence on 3rd April, but had announced that he recognized Abashidze as “supreme commander” and would not take orders from Saakashvili, who branded Dumbadze a “traitor.” The Georgian army and special forces began to manoeuvre near the boundary between Adjara and the rest of Georgia. Mr Saakashvili, who routinely denounced Abashidze as a mafia boss, announced that a private army headed by the Adjaran “bizinessman”, Alexander Davitadze, had crossed over to his side. On 1st May, the BBC quoted President Saakashvili welcoming Davitadze, whose private army numbered up to 500 men, to Tbilisi with the words, "I simply want Ajarians to see that such a man is here now"!
On 2nd May, two bridges linking Adjara to the rest of Georgia were blown up, supposedly by the Adjarans to prevent an invasion which must have disrupted road traffic to and from Turkey. Perhaps more importantly, railway tracks east of Adjara were reported to have also been destroyed which would have prevented petroleum-bearing tankers from Baku and Central Asia reaching Batumi, thus damaging Bonde Nielsen’s operations. Soon afterwards, Prime Minister Zhvania showed up at the border checkpoint at Choloki, where Adjaran Internal Affairs Minister, Jemal Gogitidze, awaited him. The exact content of the exchange between Zhvania and Gogitidze was never established, but Gogitidze reportedly “fainted” and was hospitalized for a month.
On 4th May, schools and higher education institutions in Adjara were ordered to close for the next two weeks following an anti-government demonstration organised by “Our Adjara”. Clashes took place between pro-and anti-Abashidze activists in the streets of Batumi. On the evening of 6th May, thousands of anti-Abashidze demonstrators appeared in Batumi. As a pro-Abashidze counter-demonstration was getting underway outside the small presidential palace, Abashidze emerged from the building to tell his supporters to leave in order to avoid clashes with the pro-Saakashvili crowd. Russian Security Council Secretary, Igor Ivanov, had arrived in Batumi to advise Abashidze to step down and leave with him on a Russian government plane. Rumour had it, that Ivanov had warned Abashidze that an Adjara Airlines plane might be shot down. Abashidze resigned and left Adjara with his son, Georgi (who resigned as mayor of Batumi), and Soso Gogitidze, brother of Abashidze’s late wife, Meguli.
Rumours circulated about the circumstances of Abashidze’s departure. Reports emerged that special forces had landed by helicopter in Kobuleti and were marching south to Batumi as Igor Ivanov was talking to Abashidze. Evidently, Abashidze was not prepared to use force against an invasion despite telling Walter Schwimmer in January that Adjarans would “defend themselves” if invaded. A member of staff, who was in the presidential palace on 6th May confirmed that the presence of spetsnaz (special forces) troops convinced Abashidze to leave. “There were troops everywhere, on the streets and inside… We heard gunfire that went on for at least 10 minutes. I remember him arguing with Ivanov – asking why he should go.”
Almost immediately, President Saakashvili arrived in Batumi and made a symbolic march to the beach to splash sea water on his face as hordes of mostly young people cheered him on. Children from the Abashidze-sponsored school of opera and ballet companies in Batumi, who had been on several trips to the West for concerts, chanted “Misha! Misha!” while gangs of drunken youth roamed the streets and cars roared up and down honking horns to celebrate the ‘revolution’. A gallery was looted, and a mob took furniture out of the presidential palace. A white leather chair from Mr. Abashidze’s residence was thrown on top of the statue of Memed Abashidze – Aslan’s grandfather – and set on fire. Another mob tried to storm the offices of Adjara TV which contained roughly $6 million-worth of equipment, and met resistance from the Adjara TV employees holed up there. A stand-off ensued in which the Adjara TV employees spent a few nights in the building, but the station had already changed its logo and theme music to become essentially an arm of the central government with respect to its editorial line, programming, and presentation.
On 7th May, According to AP, Saakashvili declared “There was a regime here that had far more rights than an autonomous region should have. Adjara was separate from Georgia. It had ... its own armed forces, its own police structure. But those times are over.'' Saakashvili announced that a “provisional council,” chaired by him, would rule Adjara until the election of a new parliament in June. He also announced he would stay in Batumi for “four or five days, as long as needed to organize the administration,” and that Procurator-General Irakli Okruashvili and Security Minister Zurab Adeishvili would help him “establish order.” Levan Varshalomidze, a young Adjaran railways official, was proclaimed head of the Autonomous Republic pending determination of Adjara’s political status. His official title was “presidential representative,” not head of the republic. Adjara’s parliament was abolished and the Soviet-era Supreme Council (or Supreme Soviet) restored.
Ten days after his triumph in Adjara, President Saakashvili heralded a more militant approach to Georgian politics by declaring on Rustavi TV, "Every minister must take a submachine gun in his hands, wear a military uniform and run 10 kilometers - or less if he cannot. The important thing is that all of them take part in military training." Saakashvili himself had served in the Soviet Union’s border guards in the Ukraine. This Mussoliniesque emphasis on the new regime’s military stamina boded ill for peaceful relations with Georgia’s separatist regions.
On 6th May, the US State Department hailed the triumph of its protégé in Georgia:
“The United States notes the departure of Aslan Abashidze and welcomes the peaceful restoration of Tbilisi's authority in the Autonomous Republic of Adjara. We view this as an important step toward restoring the rule of law and democratic governance in Adjara. This is an historic day for all the people of Georgia. We look forward to continuing our close cooperation with Georgia on democratic and economic reform.”
The few foreigners who had not sung from that hymn sheet with sufficient enthusiasm were marked out for denunciation by the Georgian president as he savoured a fresh triumph. On 10th May, Imedi TV broadcast Saakashvili’s comments about Walter Schwimmer, the secretary-general of the Council of Europe and its representative in Georgia, Plamen Nikolov: “I, as president of a member state of the Council of Europe, have a right to express my view, especially as I am absolutely convinced that it is correct. I think that the secretariat has adopted an extremely unconstructive position. It is the position of a real bureaucrat. It was completely at odds with the position of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, it was completely at odds with the EU's position and it was completely at odds with America's position. It was the position of a bureaucrat who had somehow been lured along by [deposed Ajarian leader] Aslan Abashidze - I do not know how.
I certainly do not regard the position of this bureaucrat as the position of any European organization. I am one of the former vice-presidents of the Parliamentary Assembly and I am president of a member state and I have the right to tell the truth, and the truth is what I have said.”
What the president had said was that Schwimmer was an “arrogant bureaucrat” with a “bloated salary.” Soon it became clear that Saakashvili had, in effect, declared the CoE’s permanent representative in Georgia, Plamen Nikolov, “persona non grata” and expelled him from the country. Days after the 20th June Adjaran parliamentary elections, the CoE announced Schwimmer’s replacement as Secretary General by Terry Davis. Schwimmer had, notably, criticized the US invasion of Iraq. Presumably Washington viewed Davis, who had ushered Shevardnadze’s (corrupt and fraudulent) Georgia into the CoE in 1999 over Abashidze’s objections to its human rights record as more reliable.
Mr. Saakashvili had given some assurances that no witch-hunt against Adjaran officials would take place, but former Adjaran Internal Affairs Minister, Jemal Gogitidze, was confined to hospital after what was rumoured to be a heart attack and Adjaran Council of Ministers Chairman, Rostom Japaridze, simply disappeared along with all the most familiar faces of Adjara’s government and parliament.
Adjaran Parliamentary Speaker, Georgi Tsintskhiladze, was arrested a little over a month after Mr. Saakashvili’s triumphant entry into Batumi and Batumi First Deputy Mayor, Jambul Ninidze, lost his position on the city government immediately, but continued for a week or so in his post as director of the port of Batumi before being arrested and made to pay a sum rumoured to be anywhere between $500,000 and $1 million to secure his release from jail.
The chronology of the most high-profile arrests, according to Rustavi-2 and the website Civil Georgia, was:
6th May: Maj.-Gen. Dumbadze arrested in Batumi, taken to Tbilisi, and interrogated by the Georgian Security Ministry. Charged with treason and facing life imprisonment.
8th May: Tariel Khalvashi, former head of the municipality of Kobuleti (Adjara’s 2nd city), arrested, accused of using force to disperse opposition demonstrators, and of disobeying the central government.
9th May: Murman Tsintsadze, former commander of the Batumi-based unit of the Georgian Internal Affairs Ministry troops, arrested for disobedience to the central government. Tsintsadze’s son Merab, chief of Adjara’s Khelvachauri district, was also arrested. A court issued an arrest warrant for Adjaran ex-Deputy Security Minister, Gogi Kupreishvili.
11th May: Gogi Kupreishvili is sentenced to three months pre-trial detention after being charged with misuse of power.
12th May: Georgian Internal Affairs Minister, Georgi Baramidze, makes a public statement declaring his pride in his ministry’s work in arresting officials in Adjara. He responds to a recent Russian Foreign Ministry statement of concern over mass arrests in Adjara by saying that he will continue to arrest officials in the region in order to recover “stolen property.” Nevertheless, there is a lull in the arrests of Adjaran officials for almost a month afterwards.
18th May: Revival activist Lasha Chakhvadze, a student from Batumi who was arrested in Tbilisi in February and later released on bail, is re-arrested in Adjara and brought to Tbilisi.
9th June: Former Adjaran Finance Minister Davit Abashidze, arrested for alleged misuse of power and misappropriation of more than 140,000 lari ($70,000) of state funds.
11th June: Police in Batumi detain four former senior Adjar officials: former Speaker of Parliament, Giorgi Tsintskhiladze, former Customs Department Chairman, Jumber Gogitidze, Batumi Customs Department Chief, Amiran Makharadze, and Industry Minister, Revaz Rusia. All are charged with abuse of office and large-scale embezzlement.
13th June: Former Batumi District Election Commission Chairman, Ednar Shamilashvili, and former Adjaran Tax Service Chief, Tamaz Bladadze, arrested. Shamilashvili is accused of misuse of power, while Bladadze faces charges for formation of illegal armed units.
16th June: Former Chief of the Adjaran Railways, Nugzar Varshanidze, arrested, accused of misuse of power and misappropriation of $230,000.
20th June: Diana Abashidze, daughter of Aslan Abashidze, arrives in Batumi to mark the one-year anniversary of her mother’s death, and is summoned for interrogation and effectively detained. Georgian Internal Affairs Minister, Irakli Okruashvili, responds to complaints from the Russian government by saying that Aslan Abashidze and the members of his family were given guarantees of immunity only on Russian soil.
21st June: Adjaran security officers report that they have arrested twelve armed men in front of Diana Abashidze’s apartment building. Shortly thereafter, the arrest of three more men is reported, supposedly friends of Diana’s brother Georgi.
BHHRG met Davit Glonti, the new Adjaran Minister of Internal Affairs, on 21st June who said that only former high-level officials and “pure criminals” had been detained. He said that these included Aslan Abashidze’s former bodyguards, who were in possession of illegal weapons. Glonti proudly declared that his ministry had recovered “huge amounts of weapons, more than three thousand AKs, and grenade launchers.” He also said that it had been a “mistake” not to arrest Jemal Gogitidze, but he said that as long as Gogitidze “commits no crimes” he had “no interest” in his whereabouts or fate. Glonti was not sure why Jambul Ninidze had been arrested, but said he thought it was for corruption, fraud, and tax evasion. As for Georgi Tsintskhiladze, Glonti said his arrest was, “you know, for the same type of thing.”
The arrests in post-revolutionary Adjara were similar to those that occurred in Tbilisi and other parts of Georgia following the “Rose Revolution” in November 2003. The accused were arrested without charge, thrown in jail, and made to pay a lump sum for their freedom which did not represent posting of bail but rather, , a “pay-to-get-out-of-the-clink” fee – not exactly a model of a system operating according to the rule of law,
Some of the arrests in Tbilisi resulted in the arrestees having heart attacks, a fact greeted with a giggle by some of Georgia’s enlightened urban intelligentsia. While attending a showing of “Power Trip” a documentary film about the US company AES Telasi’s experience in privatizing and running Georgia’s electricity system in Washington DC in March 2004, BHHRG representatives noted ripples of laughter among the audience when the film’s director told the viewers of these cardiac arrests.
After the abolition of the Abashidze-era parliament which consisted of a 10-member Senate and a 35-member Council of the Republic, the old 30-member Adjaran Supreme Soviet was restored and elections to it scheduled for 20th June. The old parliament gathered once during the pre-election period for the purpose of passing a resolution condemning the Abashidze period as undemocratic. Seven of the 45 members refused to do so, and at least one gave a speech in the parliament hall during the session to say that in fact Aslan Abashidze had done many good things for Adjara during his tenure as head of the autonomous republic.
Adjara has 12 electoral districts, and 12 of the 30 Supreme Soviet members were to be elected by a first-past-the-post system in single-mandate constituencies, while the other 18 were to be elected from party lists. The parties on the ballot were as follows:
Berdzenishvili-Republican Party
New Communist Party
“Industry Will Save Georgia”
Labour Party
“Saakashvili-Victorious Adjara”
United Communist Party
“Strong Adjara for a United Georgia” Bloc
Merab Kostava Society
14. Democratic Truth Party
Many of these parties were unknowns. The “New Communist Party” was inserted in the No. 2 slot, where Revival had run in the previous national and local elections. The United Communist Party had run in most previous elections, and its familiar, small, cheaply-made black-and-white posters bearing Stalin’s image were always visible in a few places. The Merab Kostava Society and the Democratic Truth Party were new, and “Strong Adjara for a United Georgia” was a coalition between three big losers in the “Rose Revolution”: Akaki Asatiani’s Union of Georgian Traditionalists, Irina Sarishvili-Chanturia’s National Democratic Party, and Vazha Lortkipanidze’s Christian Democratic Party. Despite the apparently wide choice, the only two parties that anyone thought had a chance of winning seats were the Berdzenishvili-Republican Party (Republicans) and “Saakashvili-Victorious Adjara,” the local manifestation of the ruling National Movement.
An initial impression was created of genuine competition between the Republicans and “Saakashvili-Victorious Adjara.” However, closer inspection revealed this opposition to be a chimera. David Berdzenishvili is a member of the Georgian parliament and leader of the Republican Party, which is in alliance with the ruling National Movement in the de facto one-party state that is Georgia today. Ideological differences between the Republicans and “Saakashvili-Victorious Adjara” were largely meaningless. BHHRG spoke with a majoritarian candidate from the Republicans, Georgi Masalkin, who was running in the 79th District in Batumi. He said that his party and “Saakashvili-Victorious Adjara” differed on two main points. First was the status of Adjara’s “autonomy.” The pro-Saakashvili party wanted to abolish Adjara’s regional budget, and to have the Adjaran prime minister and all 5 Adjaran ministers appointed directly by Tbilisi. Masalkin said that, according to Saakashvili’s version of Adjaran autonomy, if the Supreme Soviet refused to approve the candidate nominated by the President for Chairman of the Council of Ministers three times, the President could simply dissolve the Supreme Soviet and postpone new elections indefinitely. The Republicans, claimed Masalkin, wanted to abolish the status of “autonomous republic” for Adjara, but to keep an elected regional government. He said his party hoped that Adjara could serve as the prototype for elected self-government throughout Georgia, to replace the current system in which the head of state appoints all governors and mayors.
The second point of difference between the Republicans and “Saakashvili-Victorious Adjara” concerned the personnel policy of the National Movement in Adjara. Too many members of the previous elite still remained in their posts, said Masalkin, such as the chief of the Khelvachauri administration. Also, Adjaran Deputy Education Minister, Amiran Kikhuradze, still retained his position, as did “much of the previous administration” at Batumi State University. Masalkin said his party believed no high positions should be occupied by representatives of the previous regime, and he complained about the fact that former Georgian President, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, had told the Adjaran populace in 1991 that there was no alternative to Aslan Abashidze as Supreme Council chairman. This complaint struck BHHRG as odd, given the fact that the ruling clan in Georgia – which includes Berdzenishvili’s Republicans – now identifies itself with Gamsakhurdia’s legacy.
Masalkin told BHHRG that his party had criticized Mr. Saakashvili for “doing what Shevardnadze did,” by which he meant personal identification of the head of state with the ruling party. According to Masalkin, Saakashvili had promised the electorate that if his party won in Adjara, Levan Varshalomidze would be made Chairman of the Council of Ministers (i.e., Adjaran prime minister). This, said Masalkin, was an unacceptable bit of partisan campaigning by the head of state. Masalkin claimed that in spite of Mikheil Saakashvili’s “popularity throughout Georgia,” the President’s team in Adjara was “not so popular,” and that Saakashvili therefore had to spend more than a week in Adjara during the pre-election period (he was in Batumi during BHHRG’s representative’s visit).
Polling Day
BHHRG monitored the poll in Batumi, Khulo, Keda, Shuakhevi and Khelvachauri. Even though official figures for turnout were high few people seemed to be voting during the day. In District 80/8 the election commission chairman told BHHRG that voters were still being allowed to register right up to and on polling day itself, because “no old lists” were being used. He also said that the chairmen of all 12 electoral districts in Adjara were brought in from Tbilisi to assure their “independence.” The previous system, he said, was a “dictatorship” and this was the only way to ensure fairness.
In polling station No. 13 in Gobroneti out of 174 who had voted by 12:25 p.m., 67 were on the supplementary list. There were 14 observers in the polling station in addition to the 11 commission members, making for a crowded hall, but few voters entered during the time BHHRG was present. An observer from the NGO “New Generation, New Initiatives” said there had been “serious violations and disturbances,” and that he had “seen some people taking two envelopes rather than just one – but these are just technical problems”
In Polling Station No. 1 in Shuakhevi, District 82/9, out of 280 registered voters 261 had voted by 1:10 p.m., 163 of whom were supplementary list voters. Despite having only 280 registered voters, the election commission had received 800 ballot papers. When asked why, the commission chairman said: “There were 1,004 registered voters for the January presidential elections, which we then cut down to 800 in the March parliamentary elections; 626 people voted in March so we then asked for 800 ballot papers.” This suggested that the March voter lists in Adjara were not in fact inflated, as the Georgian central government had repeatedly claimed.
An observer in this polling station, a member of the Democratic Truth Party, alleged major problems with mobile ballot boxes. “The local commission is unable to provide any registered names,” he said. “Only two per cent of ballot papers should be allocated for the mobile votes, yet they have allocated nine per cent.” Eighteen people were registered as mobile ballot box voters, but, asked the observer: “Do these people actually exist?”
Again, there were 14 observers in the polling station, which raised the commotion level considerably even without voters present. The hubbub was an intimidating factor, but perhaps not as much as the very large “Saakashvili-Victorious Adjara” headquarters located opposite the polling station, with a huge Saakashvili billboard at the front. In fact, large Saakashvili billboards were on display everywhere, even in the remotest highland regions, giving the region a “totalitarian” flavour it never tasted under the supposedly autocratic Abashidze.
In Polling Station No. 5 in Khulo, District 84/11, the protocol listed 55 people as having voted by 12 p.m., and 115 by 2:10 p.m. (53 of whom were on the supplementary list). 190 people were registered in the precinct, while 400 ballot papers had been received. 8 out of 18 majoritarian non-partisan candidates had withdrawn their candidacy,. BHHRG asked one commission member which party she belonged to, and she responded: “I’m with the Industrialists party – actually no, I’m not, I’m with the ‘Saakashvili-Victorious Adjara’ party.”
Outside this polling station, about twenty yards from the entrance, two men who claimed to represent an NGO called “United Georgia” were gathering signatures for a petition to abolish the “autonomous republic” status of Adjara and establish “true regional self-rule.” At 14:10 they claimed to have garnered approximately 70 signatures. They said that, although they were at present an NGO, they would “soon become a political party.”
In Polling Station No. 1 in Khulo, District 84/12, 221 people had voted by 2:20 p.m. out of a total 230 registered voters. 109 were on the supplementary list. One of the 17 observers, a member of “Fair Elections,” told BHHRG: “Some people have come without their ID cards, as they’ve gone up to the mountains and forgotten them. It is impossible for 90 people to have voted in 2 hours if you consider that you can have only two people voting at the same time, and the procedure they must go through.”
In Polling Station No. 2 in Keda, District 80/7, the protocol on the wall showed that 143 people had voted by 12 p.m., while 362 had voted by 5 p.m. This meant that over 200 people had voted in the space of five hours, out of a total of 250 registered in the precinct. The door to the polling station was shut, and a man on the door explained this as “to prevent more than two people from entering at a time.” BHHRG asked the observers how it was possible for so many voters to have gone through the registration and ballot-casting procedure per hour, but were told by two of the 12 observers – as an election commission member hovered over their shoulders – that there had been “no violations.”
In Polling Station No. 20 in Batumi, District 83/5, 231 had voted by 12 p.m., and the number had jumped to 604 by 5 o’clock. 651 had voted by 6:20, and 287 of these were supplementary list voters. One of the 17 observers assured BHHRG that, “everything is OK; I was expecting violations.” He explained the nearly 400 that had managed to vote in 5 hours by saying that “7 or 8 people were allowed to vote at the same time.” In Polling Station No. 20 in Batumi, District 79/2, 541 had voted by 6:46 p.m. out of a total of 484 registered in the precinct. Between 12 and 5 p.m., 286 had voted according to the protocol. 1,400 ballot papers had been received, and the commission chairman claimed that March polling data had been used to calculate the number requested. A framed picture of Saakashvili was proudly displayed on the wall – a portion of the “Saakashvili-Victorious Adjara” campaign poster cut in such a way as to exclude the full name of the party – featuring only the word “Saakashvili” under the young president’s smiling visage.
At the count at Polling Station No. 7 in Batumi, District 79/1, the protocol showed that 302 people had voted between 12 and 5 p.m. 599 people had voted in total, out of 426 registered voters, 266 of whom were on the supplementary list. Early into count, the supposedly non-partisan commission chairman pumped his fist in the air and exclaimed “yeah!” when it became clear that “Saakashvili-Victorious Adjara” would take a commanding lead in the proportional representation balloting. Final results in this polling station were as follows:
Proportional representation:
Saakashvili-Victorious Adjara: 349
Berdzenishvili-Republican Party: 181
Industry Will Save Georgia: 34
Labour Party: 9
New Communist Party: 6
Strong Adjara for a United Georgia: 3
Merab Kostava Society: 2
Democratic Truth Party: 2
United Communist Party: 2
Spoiled ballots: 7
Invalid ballots: 17
Total votes were 593, and none of the observers of commission members was able to explain the discrepancy between this figure and the 599 who had allegedly voted, despite myriad sums performed on paper for BHHRG’s benefit. Results for the main majoritarian candidates were as follows:
Georgi Masalkin (Berdzenishvili-Republicans): 229
Davit Batsikadze (Saakashvili-Victorious Adjara): 225
“Industry Will Save Georgia” candidate: 84
There were rumours that the OSCE and Council of Europe (CoE) were deploying “hundreds” of monitors on election day, but BHHRG encountered none of them during its observation. After polling day, a group called the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe, an associate entity of the CoE, held a press conference in the Mercury Hotel. Their page-and-a-half statement distributed to the audience, stated that “voting went smoothly, although the electoral process fell short of international standards in some regards. Our major concerns were the accuracy of the voters list and the secrecy of the ballot.” The group, led by Joseph Borg from Malta said that the election was a “satisfactory improvement over the previous poll it observed in Adjara, in 2001, and that this represented “an important step forward” towards Adjaran democracy.
However, the statement hinted that “the campaign was dominated by the party in power.” This was putting it mildly, since the only “opposition” came from an ally of the National Movement. One concern raised was that “in some areas voters were transported to the polling stations by buses organized by some political parties. This may have induced pressure on the voters.” However, when asked which political parties specifically were engaging in this practice, a Russian member of the delegation, Ivan Volodin of the CoE Secretariat, responded: “We didn’t establish exactly which parties.”
The members of the Congress’s observer mission asserted that having so many domestic observers in the polling stations was “healthy”. They also said that in one polling station at 7:45 p.m. they encountered a violation that had been going on all day, but which none of the observers – “even the ‘Fair Elections’ representative” – had noticed! BHHRG had already found examples of protocols bearing impossibly high numbers of ballots cast in the time available, but with local observers unanimous in their positive evaluation of the process. In short, the notion that domestic observers could be relied on for reassurance – by the Congress delegation’s own admission – did not hold much water.
The Group’s observers were profoundly depressed by the first election in the new “democratic” Adjara. It was the fourth election to which Adjarans had been subjected in the space of less than 8 months, each one worse than the last. Civil Georgia’s website had claimed that 208,000 voters were registered in Adjara, but given the huge proportion of supplementary list voters, this figure seemed to indicate that the voter lists compiled during Aslan Abashidze’s tenure were actually deflated, not inflated. Commission chairmen even admitted they had used the 28th March figures as a guide for the number of ballot papers they had requested, naturally giving rise to the question of why the figures of the former regime had been scrapped in the first place.
In the end, “Saakashvili-Victorious Adjara” claimed 28 out of 30 seats on the Adjaran Supreme Soviet, including all 12 majoritarian seats. BHHRG asked Georgi Masalkin whether he thought the election had been fairly conducted. Masalkin alleged vague violations but said he was “confident” that the 2 out of 30 seats were “enough for us to make our voice heard.” Masalkin had won a seat from the party list (he had run as both a party list and single-mandate constituency candidate).
In the Abashidze-era parliament 5 seats had been occupied by opposition members, representing one-ninth of the total. Now (assuming the Berdzenishvili-Republicans were a genuine opposition), the fraction had dropped to one-fifteenth. If democracy had truly triumphed, it would seem that it was at the expense of pluralism. “Victorious Adjara”, it seems, had defeated the Adjarans themselves. Truly, Adjara had been re-integrated into Georgia.
A veritable propaganda blitz had been unleashed on the hapless Adjarans by Georgia’s Western-sponsored media. In a familiar pattern, economic nirvana was promised if Abashidze’s regime was removed and wholesale control restored to the centre. Despite 12 years of broken promises not only in Georgia, but in the whole former Soviet space, many local Adjarans believed that the land of milk and honey was round the corner. To bring this to fruition, they turned on Mr. Abashidze and his government even though only months before many of them were fully aware that their standard of living – though low - was way ahead of their compatriots in Georgia proper.
Although BHHRG’s representatives had been told (on many occasions) that the Adjarans had ‘guns’, no attempt whatsoever was made to defend the benefits that had been accrued over the previous decade. In this they resembled all their former Soviet brethren under attack from Western-sponsored ‘reformers’ who have rolled over and taken the punishment. The legacy of Communism itself is partly to blame. People are still keenly attuned to where power lies and fear the consequences of misbehaviour. A culture of betrayal still persists breeding a natural predilection to disloyalty. Enmeshed with all these qualities is the underlying belief that someone will come down a rainbow and give you something for nothing. The need for hard work and sacrifice is rarely heard on anyone’s lips. If the going gets too tough, you up sticks and move somewhere else.
Mr. Abashidze and his regime were also complicit in their own downfall. The former president’s campaign to woo Western politicians and opinion makers was doomed from the start. Delivering lavish gifts to organizations such as the Council of Europe like a medieval caliph only caused derision. Ordinary Adjarans understandably felt betrayed by Abashize as he focused all his attention on influencing foreign potentates, at least Saakashvili was on the scene while Abashidze and his team jetted around the world.
Meanwhile, the president’s team was throwing dollars around, hoping, no doubt, that some of them would land in the right places and secure their freedom once the new regime took over. One such minor official now earns c.30 lari per month down from 300 lari when Abashidze was in power. But, at least he hasn’t been arrested – yet.
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