Georgia leader defends reputation in election
TBILISI (Reuters) - Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili will be defending more than just his parliamentary majority in an election this month.
The Georgian leader has staked his future on closer ties with the West and sells his country abroad as a beacon of freedom and liberty in a repressive former Soviet neighborhood.
But after his government tear-gassed and beat protesters last year, closed a critical television station at gunpoint, and won a presidential vote in January amid allegations of fraud, Saakashvili needs to prove his own democratic credentials.
The president is confident he will win a majority of parliament's 150 seats for his ruling United National Movement, whose red and white banners and posters dominate central Tbilisi ahead of the May 21 election.
"We are leading in the polls right now," Saakashvili told Reuters in an interview. "We want to make the elections as clean as we can. We need not only free and fair elections, we need beautiful elections."
But the main opposition bloc, which accuses Saakashvili of stealing the presidency in January's vote, expects more cheating this time.
"The National Movement wants to falsify these elections," said opposition leader and defeated presidential candidate Levan Gachechiladze.
"The government is using all its power and the national budget for the vote...If the presidential elections had been free, then Saakashvili wouldn't be president now."
The government dismisses such criticism as wild exaggeration. Saakashvili hails Georgia as a true democracy though he concedes that "some things could have been done differently" last November, when police beat demonstrators.
A delegation of observers from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe reported last month that "the low level of public trust in the electoral process was a point of concern".
"The democratic conduct of the upcoming parliamentary elections in Georgia...is crucial to restoring public confidence in the democratic process", it added.
RUSSIAN CONFRONTATION
Guaranteeing clean and fair elections is not the only hurdle facing the Georgian leader.
Voters are tired of a long-running confrontation with their huge northern neighbor Russia. It hurt their country's small economy after Moscow imposed punitive trade sanctions and started deporting Georgian guest workers, who sent valuable earnings home to their families.
Saakashvili attacks Russia in almost every one of his statements over its support for two separatist Georgian regions. He devoted a big part of his recent speech at a gathering of the ruling party to patriotic rhetoric against Moscow.
"Saakashvili's policy against Russia is not the way to do business, it is too aggressive," Gachechiladze said. "...The government is trying to shift attention from its internal problems to a foreign threat".
Georgia lacks significant natural resources and has missed out on the oil boom which has fuelled growth in neighboring Russia and Azerbaijan, although it is developing a role as a transit route for oil and gas from East to West.
Saakashvili has won praise from the West for an aggressive program of free market reforms which have captured some foreign investment and boosted growth to 12 percent last year. But few benefits have trickled down to the average voter.
Partly in response to opposition criticism that he has failed to tackle poverty and unemployment, Saakashvili has cut back on military spending and sharply boosted social programs over the past few months.
Despite the government's difficulties, most independent observers still expect it to keep a parliamentary majority. They say the forthcoming election may be imperfect but is likely to be better than those held in nearby former Soviet states.
The opposition is fragmented and divided and has not yet convinced voters it can offer a real alternative.
"Campaigning by Georgia's political parties is built upon criticizing the government and not around proposing political projects or concepts," Ramaz Sakvarelidze, an analyst, said.
(Editing by Keith Weir)
