Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Wall Street Journal
May 17, 2008
Pg. 2
By Marc Champion
The Caucasus nation of Georgia holds parliamentary elections Wednesday that the country's U.S.-educated president, Mikheil Saakashvili, recently said need to be not just free and fair, but "beautiful." He also said their fairness was essential for Georgia's national security.
Western diplomats and analysts say Mr. Saakashvili is right on both counts. Georgia's democratic credentials have become a key issue in persuading reluctant members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization such as Germany to back Georgia's bid for membership. NATO leaders said as much at their summit in Bucharest earlier this year, when countries led by Germany prevented the bloc from giving Tbilisi a membership roadmap. The summit's final statement said NATO members "look forward to free and fair parliamentary elections in Georgia in May," and set December for a progress review empowered to deliver the roadmap.
Georgia sees NATO membership as important to its efforts to fend off what it describes as Russia's "creeping annexation" of two separatist Georgian territories, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Georgia's much larger and militarily more powerful neighbor to the north has sent further troops into Abkhazia and taken steps towards de facto recognition since the Bucharest summit.
Mr. Saakashvili's democratic credentials were severely tarnished late last year when he used tear gas and rubber bullets to put down opposition protests and took a TV station off the air. To resolve the crisis, he called early presidential elections for January and moved up a vote on the country's legislature. Mr. Saakashvili won the presidential election, but while the poll got a headline stamp of approval from international monitors, there also were sweeping caveats.
An interim report by election monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe complained of many of the same problems in the current election campaign. These include media bias, intimidation, abuse of public resources, padding of voter rolls and vote buying. In one example, a candidate for Mr. Saakashvili's United National Movement had to withdraw from the race after he was taped warning local government employees that they needed to secure an 80% vote in his favor or face dismissal.
Georgia's democracy still looks healthier than those of its neighbors. Armenia's February presidential election got a worse report card than Mr. Saakshvili's. Azerbaijan is a barely veiled dictatorship. The OSCE declined to send an observer mission to Russia for its presidential vote in March, where opposition rallies were broken up, candidates barred and television coverage of the opposition minimal. None of these neighbors is trying to join NATO, however.
Mr. Saakashvili's party looks likely to win next week, though unbiased and reliable polls are hard to find. An opinion poll conducted last month for the U.S. polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, which works for the United National Movement, put Mr. Saakashvili's party well ahead of the field with 44% compared to 12% for the United Opposition Council, 16% undecided and the rest distributed among three other parties. The company predicted January's presidential election result precisely, though opposition leaders claimed that was part of a fix.
May 17, 2008
Pg. 2
By Marc Champion
The Caucasus nation of Georgia holds parliamentary elections Wednesday that the country's U.S.-educated president, Mikheil Saakashvili, recently said need to be not just free and fair, but "beautiful." He also said their fairness was essential for Georgia's national security.
Western diplomats and analysts say Mr. Saakashvili is right on both counts. Georgia's democratic credentials have become a key issue in persuading reluctant members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization such as Germany to back Georgia's bid for membership. NATO leaders said as much at their summit in Bucharest earlier this year, when countries led by Germany prevented the bloc from giving Tbilisi a membership roadmap. The summit's final statement said NATO members "look forward to free and fair parliamentary elections in Georgia in May," and set December for a progress review empowered to deliver the roadmap.
Georgia sees NATO membership as important to its efforts to fend off what it describes as Russia's "creeping annexation" of two separatist Georgian territories, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Georgia's much larger and militarily more powerful neighbor to the north has sent further troops into Abkhazia and taken steps towards de facto recognition since the Bucharest summit.
Mr. Saakashvili's democratic credentials were severely tarnished late last year when he used tear gas and rubber bullets to put down opposition protests and took a TV station off the air. To resolve the crisis, he called early presidential elections for January and moved up a vote on the country's legislature. Mr. Saakashvili won the presidential election, but while the poll got a headline stamp of approval from international monitors, there also were sweeping caveats.
An interim report by election monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe complained of many of the same problems in the current election campaign. These include media bias, intimidation, abuse of public resources, padding of voter rolls and vote buying. In one example, a candidate for Mr. Saakashvili's United National Movement had to withdraw from the race after he was taped warning local government employees that they needed to secure an 80% vote in his favor or face dismissal.
Georgia's democracy still looks healthier than those of its neighbors. Armenia's February presidential election got a worse report card than Mr. Saakshvili's. Azerbaijan is a barely veiled dictatorship. The OSCE declined to send an observer mission to Russia for its presidential vote in March, where opposition rallies were broken up, candidates barred and television coverage of the opposition minimal. None of these neighbors is trying to join NATO, however.
Mr. Saakashvili's party looks likely to win next week, though unbiased and reliable polls are hard to find. An opinion poll conducted last month for the U.S. polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, which works for the United National Movement, put Mr. Saakashvili's party well ahead of the field with 44% compared to 12% for the United Opposition Council, 16% undecided and the rest distributed among three other parties. The company predicted January's presidential election result precisely, though opposition leaders claimed that was part of a fix.