TBILISI: Georgia votes in parliamentary polls on Monday with President Mikheil Saakashvili’s party facing a billionaire-led opposition in a test of the ex-Soviet state’s democracy overshadowed by a torture scandal.
Outrage over the beating and rape of prisoners damaged Saakashvili’s ruling party just before the vote, sparking protests and international condemnation while raising fears of post-poll turmoil in the small Western-backed republic.
Both Saakashvili and his billionaire challenger Bidzina Ivanishvili have vowed to win outright after a bitter campaign between the main opponents that was described by OSCE election observers as “confrontational and rough”.
“In this election we’re seeing a clash of two very powerful personalities, two very big egos who both want to defeat the other and don’t want to compromise,” Thomas de Waal, a Caucasus expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, told AFP.
Opposition coalition chief Ivanishvili accuses Saakashvili of establishing an authoritarian regime; the Georgian president says his tycoon opponent would end the country’s modernisation programme and send it back to its corrupt and chaotic past.
Before the torture scandal erupted last week, most opinion polls gave Saakashvili’s United National Movement the lead over Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream bloc.
It remains unclear however how the outrage over the prison torture videos will affect the vote.
The US and EU have called for fair polls that will advance Georgia’s ambitions to join Western institutions.
AFP
