Categories
Journalistic Survey
Articles
Reportage
Analitic
Photo Reportage
Exclusive
Interview
Foreign Media about Georgia
Editorial
Position
Reader's opinion
Blog
Themes
Children's Rights
Women's Rights
Justice
Refugees/IDPs
Minorities
Media
Army
Health
Corruption
Elections
Education
Penitentiary
Religion
Others

Disappointed Opposition and Lustrated NGOs

January 14, 2010

If you want to defeat the opponent, you should learn his character well.
Parliamentary opposition, where majority is former supporters of Mikheil Saakashvili and claims to know the president and his plans well, has been trapped for so many times already.

Offering the opposition to elect one of the three candidates nominated by the president, before that, consultations with NGOs turned out performance like earlier dialogues with opposition parties and offering positions of deputy ministers to opposition leaders.

After Saakashvili blatantly breached the law and did not nominate candidates of CEC chairperson on January 8 as it was requested by the law, we witnessed terrible picture. On January 11, non-governmental organizations and experts, who claim to be concerned about democracy and rule of law in the country, met the president in Batumi to consult the candidates of the CEC chairperson. Thus, in fact, they legitimized the illegal decision. However, most NGOs and experts support the government and it can explain their activities clearly.

As it was expected, on January 12 the president nominated those 3 candidates out of proposed 14 one who were already actively spoken in the lobby interviews of the parliament to be pro-governmental candidates.

The “perfect” three people are: interim chairperson of the CEC Levan Tarkhnishvili, nominated by the pro-governmental NGO Liberty Institute; financial audit of the CEC Zurab Kharatishvili – nominated by another pro-governmental NGO “Alpe” and former chairperson of the Constitutional Court Otar Sichinava- nominated by the pro-governmental NGO New Generation – New Initiative. Saakashvili did not nominate any of the candidates proposed by the NGOs which oppose the government; those candidates are considered to be independent and impartial people by the society; they were Eka Siradze-Delone and Kakha Sopromadze.

Saakashvili and the ruling party showed to the opposition and entire society that they are not going to give in at least minimum of their power. One more interesting point is that Saakashvhili nominated candidates after his meeting with US Senator John McCain who called upon the government of Georgia to develop democracy in Georgia.

The noise, artificially created by the parliamentary opposition and later their support for postponing the deadline for discussion of CEC candidates exposed once more that the ruling party seriously influences parliamentary opposition.

Non-parliamentary opposition has been disappointed for so many times already. It is interesting whether they will discuss the candidates nominated by Saakasvhili. If the non-parliamentary opposition wants to protect their reputation, they should not participate in this procedure. They should allow the government to choose the candidate nominated by the government and impose the responsibility of falsification of the elections on the government.

Thus, local self-governmental elections turned out discredited from the very beginning and there is small chance of fair elections.

“Kvela Siakhle”

News