Georgia vote shows Rose Revolution honeymoon over

By James Kilner - Analysis

TBILISI (Reuters) - Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili's reelection in a vote deemed broadly fair has helped restore his democratic credentials, but the slim victory shows his post-revolution honeymoon is over.

He won just over half the votes on Saturday, down from 90 percent in a 2004 election that rewarded the staunch U.S. ally for leading the "Rose Revolution" to challenge a flawed poll the year before.

"Georgia has moved from a stable, revolutionary government to something much more messy, more normal," said Svante Cornell, of the Institute for Security and Development Policy.

Saakashvili had ridden a wave of popular support to push through radical reforms and aggressively seek closer integration with the West, to Moscow's annoyance.

He and a close-knit group of advisors dominated Georgia, about the size of Ireland and with a population of about 4.5 million, and his party controlled parliament.

But Saturday's presidential election marked a huge shift. With most of the votes counted, the central election commission said Saakashvili had scraped a first round win with 52 percent to his nearest rival's 27 percent.

"The fifth of January ended the revolution. The revolution is over," said Temur Iakobashvili, an analyst at the independent Georgian Foundation for International and Strategic Studies. "Now we have to deal with new challenges."

The vote went some way to restoring Saakashvili's image as a democrat, which took a tumble in November after he ordered police to fire rubber bullets and tear gas at demonstrators protesting against his rule.

Georgia lies on the route of a major oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea to Europe and is the centre of a regional power struggle between the United States and Russia.

TURNOFF

Western monitors scrutinised the vote and though they said there had been numerous violations, these were not serious enough to influence the election, dubbed Georgia's first competitive vote since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union.

Diplomats said this reassured vital foreign investors and would help Saakashvili keep favour with his big supporters, the United States and the European Union.

But the monitors' report did not stop opponents -- who accuse Saakashvili of corruption, economic mismanagement and autocracy -- from calling the vote a fraud.

The opposition has pledged daily protests and the first demonstration on Sunday attracted up to 7,000 people.

This compares to the 100,000 people who demonstrated against the government in November -- the peak of the five day protest which triggered the police crackdown.

It is unclear if the opposition can maintain the pressure but the possibility of violence and mass protests hovers.

"Clearly some of the opposition want to protest but can they keep it up and what scale will it be on?" a Western diplomat said. "It could be a bumpy ride."

Georgians vote again in either March or April in a parliamentary election which analysts say is unpredictable. Opposition parties might well win most seats.

This would set parliament against Saakashvili and might paralyse politics, said analyst Cornell, possibly slowing his drive to join NATO and turning off foreign investors.

"The polarisation of politics could become a problem for Georgia internationally," Cornell said.