Translated material
Georgia is on the verge of foul
They choose - we look
They choose - we look.
According to the All -Russian sociological survey, 72% of Russians surveyed by sociologists, a month ago, were sure that the first viciner and officially appointed successor Dmitry Medvedev would win in the presidential election on March 2, 2008. According to the possible candidate from the opposition, the former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, many Russians do not know at all when the presidential election will be. Amazing, but in some countries it happens exactly the opposite. In Georgia, for example, in the victory of Mikhail Saakashvili, even some of his closest associates doubted and almost everyone expected the second round. In the United States, where the elections speak in non-stop mode, only one thing is known: they will take place on November 4, 2008, the rest is a continuous ellipsis
The applicant.
Mikhail Saakashvili was elected President of Georgia. And in the first round. The CCTERS are sure: Georgia "successfully passed the exam for democracy." Opponents say the exact opposite. But the final assessment can only be set in April. The New Times correspondents tried to understand the intrigues of Georgian democracy directly on Tbilisi streets and competitors' headquarters
Ilya Barabanov, Natalia Moral
Tbilisi - Moscow
At the exit from the International Airport in Tbilisi, there is a huge poster with a portrait of Mikhail Saakashvili and call to vote for No. 5 in the balloon. No. 5 is Saakashvili. Along the highway towards Tbilisi there are 17 more similar shields. In Tbilisi itself - billboards, advertising buses, stickers in the subway ... “The entire administrative resource was thrown into the Saakashvili campaign,” says one of the leaders of the Georgian opposition, and a former state minister for resolving conflicts Georgy Haindrava. However, it was in Tbilisi that Saakashvili lost the elections.
Administrative resource
The leitmotif of the election campaign in Georgia was a number of scandals that received international publicity. Firstly, the elections themselves were scheduled after the notorious November speeches of the opposition. On November 2, 2007, more than 150 thousand people entered the streets of Tbilisi. On November 7, a pretty badly thinned rally (300-500 people remained in front of the parliament) was brutally dispersed. In parallel with the help of special forces, the broadcasting of the most popular in the country of the Imady (The New Times (The New Times, wrote in detail about these events in No. 40, 41), which provided the rostrum of the opposition. Georgia switched to a state of emergency. It was difficult to save his reputation by Saakashvili, but he found the way out: he resigned ahead of schedule and scheduled the presidential elections on January 5, as well as two plebiscites: on the country's entry into NATO and the transfer of parliamentary elections from November 2008 - in fact, the latter was one of the main requirements of the opposition in November. The emergency was soon canceled. The Imtyi television channel even returned to the air. But not for long. On December 18, a video was published on which deputy Valery Gelbahiani, chief of staff of one of the presidential candidates from the opposition, billionaire and owner of Imady Badri Patarkatsishvili, tried to agree with the head of the special operational department (SOD) of the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs on the support of his government coup, outlined by supporters Patarkatsishvili on January 5 - 6. After this scandal, Imady journalists decided to stop broadcasting, explaining this with their unwillingness to participate in dirty political games. As a result, by the beginning of the elected campaign, the opposition had practically no full public platform. “All six large television channels work on Saakashvili,” said Georgy Haindrava. The Rupor of the opposition at this time was the Caviac channel, it can only be seen in Tbilisi. But the truth is that the opposition received a total of 15 hours of free advertising time on central TV: every week 21 political talk shows were broadcast on the central television channels. Each of them was performed by representatives of both the parties and candidates from the opposition. This went on four weeks. The New Times correspondents were also convinced of the new ones, all the candidates also showed all the candidates. But the fact that news releases began with plots about Mikhail Saakashvili, which, as a rule, were longer and more than those in which the activities of opposition candidates were covered.
Money
The use of the administrative resource was much more obvious in external advertising. The opposition candidates had to be content with the placement of their A4 format posters on fences, and they, according to representatives of the headquarters, were quickly torn off. On the eve of the elections, Tbilisi also ran for 2000 buses with Saakashvili advertising, and on the election day the authorities made all public transport free. “In order not to be accused of monopolism, we did not use all public transport,” explains the chief ideologist of the Saakashvili party, “The Unified National Movement” and the leader of the parliamentary majority of George Bokeria. “A private company owned the rights to place advertising by transport, we specifically turned to it and found out that no other competitor even tried to negotiate with them to advertise himself in this way.” In an interview with The New Times, George Zhivani, the former chief of staff of Badri Patarkatsishvili, who had left this post after the scandal with video recording, said that all financial flows for the opposition were blocked. “All the attempts of Patarkatsishvili were blocked, even if it was just about the salary of the staff of the headquarters,” Zhvani said, adding that none of the businessmen was risked to finance the opposition, and in advertising firms in response to the possibility of advertising their candidates for billboards or on the same buses, oppositionists were categorical refusal. “Whoever has money puts billboards,” the Minister of Economy of Georgia Kakha Bendukidze, Minister of Economy of Georgia, denied the words of the reinforcement in an interview with the New Times. “Someone decided to spend money on outdoor advertising, someone decided to dispose of them differently.” Bendukidze is sure that all the opposition’s conversations that they are forbidden to place advertising are a lie and provocation. “This is a bunch of adventurers,” Bendukidze summed up. “Some of them (opposition candidates) are stupid, some are helpless.”
Early victory
He promised the first results of the elections of Georgia at midnight, four hours after the end of the vote. In the morning, a queue lined up to the plots. This, however, was not due to the high explicit of voters, which eventually turned out to be quite ordinary- 56.62%, but with not the best orgalization: there were queues on the streets, but it was empty inside the polling stations. No results were received at midnight. But after the end of the vote, a whole mediadram broke out. First, representatives of the unknown Ukrainian sociological company announced the victory of the candidate from the United opposition Levan Gachechiladze. They talked about the deafening triumph in Tbilisi and the general victory in the country, but not in the first round. At the headquarters of Gachechiladze, the news was perceived with a bang. “We fought for this victory and we achieved it,” Haindrava said. A few more minutes passed, and the results of another Exit-Pole have already appeared, made by order of four Georgian television channels. According to them, Saakashvili won already in the first round, gaining more than 50% of the vote. They began to celebrate already at the headquarters of Saakashvili, located in the Tbilisi Philharmonic. More than a thousand people were packed into the hall, who distributed the flags of Georgia. The concert began. Saakashvili appeared in the Philharmonic after one in the morning. His speech took exactly three minutes. Having thanked those who voted for him, and those who did not vote for him, he promised to work for the benefit of the Georgian people, after which the event ended. Tbilisi Central Street, Rustaveli Avenue, reminded St. Petersburg after the victory of the Zenit football. Machines, from which 2 - 3 flags of Georgia, alarm stuck out, cut circles around the city. “Reds” (the color of Saakashvili supporters) celebrated the victory over the “white” (color chosen by the united opposition). Oppositionists regarded this holiday as a pressure on the members of the election commission who at that time considered votes, announcing mass falsifications in the elections.
The first data from the CEC appeared only at 4 in the morning. Saakashvili gained more than 60%, and no one believed on the second round. The opposition urged its supporters to go to Ulita. The rally began at two in the afternoon, collecting more than 10 thousand people on Rick Square. At this point, Saakashvili's indicators have already fallen to 55%. There was a probability of a second round. Having declared the inadmissibility of falsification of the will of citizens, the opposition leaders demanded at a rally the second round. At this point, all other candidates had already been stated about their support in the second round. Badri Patarkatsishvili made a statement from London (he voted in L Ondon). There were rumors in the assembled crowd that the authorities specially watered the area of water at night so that people were uncomfortable, and in case of acceleration, no one could run away. However, no one was in a hurry to disperse the opposition, several traffic police cars stood in the distance, followed by what was happening without interfering 1 .
“Saakashvili does not understand his people! He studied and worked in the West after graduation, and returned to Georgia to immediately become a deputy, ”one of the protesters explained to reporters. - He does not understand what can be done and what is impossible. You can’t remove the girl at a bus stop at night, sleep with her right in the car, and then release. The next day, the whole city will know about it! "
By the end of the rally, the news from the Sheraton Hotel came, where observers from the OSCE held their press conference: they recognized the elections by democratic, calling them “the most competitive in the history of Georgia,” and called on the Georgian authorities to carefully deal with all the violations. The rally ended. After literally an hour, it became known: according to the CIK, Saakashvili is already gaining only 48.5%. The second round seemed inevitable. Only then it became clear: at that moment all the voices in Tbilisi were simply read. The capital of Georgia, despite the billboards and buses hung with advertising, opposed Saakashvili, supporting the opposition. 32.5% of voters voted for Saakashvili in Tbilisi, and almost 40% for Gachechiladze. “The Tbilisites were disappointed in Saakashvili,” an elderly seller in a newspaper tent, just in case, could not be recorded just in case. But then, for the headquarters of the new old president, reassurance began: the rural areas for the most part voted for “our Misha”. The forecast of Kakha Bendukidze, which he gave The New Times on the Voting Day, almost completely came true: Saakashvili will win in the first round, gaining exactly twice as much as Gachechiladze: 52% versus 25%.
Waterloo for the president
“What an eccipper! This is a lie, not an eccipper! - A taxi driver who brought the New Times correspondents does not believe in the honesty of elections. -Here is my taxi-this is an eccip. Over the past one and a half months, - 500 people, and only two of them were supporters of the “single national movement”, and 498 were going to vote for anyone except Misha. ” Another argument of the opposition: at the November rallies, people came out to be transferred to the transfer of parliamentary elections from November to April. The results of the referendum on this issue: more than 60% of citizens voted for the elections in April. “How, supporting the opposition requirement, could Georgians vote for Saakashvili?” They asked the New Times reporters. But a comparison of the results of the presidential elections with the results of the referendum (by the way, the majority voted for the entry of Georgia to NATO) is difficult to consider correct. It is even more difficult to check the rumors of mass falsifications: “We had a case in the Mardnetsi area,” says David Saganelidze, chief of staff of one of the opposition candidates and Secretary Generals of the New Right party. - In the same kindergarten, two sites were located nearby. On one a video camera was installed, but on the other not. On the site with a camera out of 1314 registered voters, 328 people came to the polls, of which 215 voted for Saakashvili. On the site without a camera out of 1458 voters, 1407 came, of which 1199 voted for Saakashvili. ” In addition to Tbilisi, Saakashvili lost in many other large settlements. And there are areas where they voted in the Turkmen-Uzbek style: for example, in the Ninotsmind area for Saakashvili voted a little more than 90% of citizens, which is impossible by definition.
Out of the frying pan into the fire
At the time of signing the number, the opposition announced the intention to dispute the election results in court. On the 13th, another opposition rally is scheduled, and how it will end is difficult to say today. If the revision of the results of the elections does not occur, then two weeks after the inauguration, his second presidential term will begin for Saakashvili. Georgia will instantly enter the new campaign, already parliamentary. Considering that in total, the opposition candidates gained 43% of the vote, you can be sure: the next composition of the Georgian parliament will be no longer so loyal Saakashvili. Golden times of three years ago, when 97% of citizens were ready to vote for him, passed. So the answer to the question whether Georgia passed its exam for democracy can only be given in April when parliamentary elections are held. True, Saakashvili is clearly trying to help the representatives of the Prochrevsky Youth Movement "ours": they stated that "Georgian elections did not meet the Russian standards of democracy." Of course, Saakashvili can regard this as a large and unexpected, given the source, compliment.
The results of monitoring of television channels
The media set published the results of its monitoring of the four leading television channels of Georgia in the pre-election period. Monitoring was carried out from December 7, 2007 to January 4, 2008 inclusive. They studied the ether of four television channels: “Public Broadcaster of Georgia”, “Rustavi-2”, “MZU” and “Imady”. The airtime provided by all four broadcasters of presidential candidates: 1. Levan Gachechiladze - 16 hours 36 minutes 20 seconds; 2. Badri Patarkatsishvili - 11 hours 10 minutes 37 seconds; 3. David Gamkrelidze - 14 hours 31 minutes 06 seconds; 4. Shalva Natelashvili - 14 hours 30 minutes 03 seconds; 5. Mikhail Saakashvili - 19 hours 46 minutes 47 seconds; 6. Gia Maisashvili - 11 hours 36 minutes 47 seconds; 7. Irina Sarishvili - 7 hours 36 minutes 47 seconds. The monitoring results did not take into account the airtime that was given to the publication of hidden audio and video recordings (operational materials of the Prosecutor General’s Office), which compromise the presidential candidate Badri Patarkasishvili and the head of his election headquarters Valery Gelbakhiani.
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1 In accordance with the very liberal Georgian legislation, no permission from the authorities is required to conduct a rally. The only thing that is prohibited is to rally at the court of ships. In the case of organizing a procession with the overlap of traffic, the authorities must be notified in 5 days.