Despite assurances from Georgia’s defence minister David Tevzadze that the country’s armed forces were on the side of the new leadership, Mikhail Saakashvili said he feared for Georgia’s stability because “certain people are preparing a counter-revolution,” according to the Interfax news agency.
Yet the first blow to peace appears to have come from pro-opposition forces:
The amount of the funding cited in this article is so close in numbers to the recently contested reconstruction ‘budget’ Bush badgered critics in Congress for, one can barely be distinguished from the other.
It’s been a hectic holiday week filled with visitors. I’ve had to cancel some events as I was hit last weekend by some nasty flu-bug and sending it on to the coast with my loved ones didn’t seem like a very neighbourly thing to do.
I’m days behind in my reading. A quick search just now failed to find articles that reveal specific details about the illegality of the Georgia vote or how widespread the fraud. I could be missing a lot, but I get the impression interest in such facts fell off the radar once Shevardnadze resigned.
Just some additional links and thoughts that continue to nag me.
More than a few of these articles I’ve glanced at this morning are characterising the U.S. role in this as supportive of the opposition from the very beginning of their vote-rigging accusations. Yet as the Financial Times correctly reports:
I’m heading back to my sick bed.
Mark MacKinnon comments on Shevardnadze’s resignation in an article appearing on the Globe and Mail:
But somewhere along the line, Mr. Shevardnadze reversed course and decided to once more embrace Russia. This summer, Georgia signed a secret 25-year deal to make the Russian energy giant Gazprom its sole supplier of gas. Then it effectively sold the electricity grid to another Russian firm, cutting out AES, the company that the U.S. administration had backed to win the deal. Mr. Shevardnadze attacked AES as “liars and cheats.” Both deals dramatically increased Russian influence in Tbilisi.
I posted a link to Putin’s energy push into Georgia here.
Eurasianet gets into more detail here:
Anatoly Chubais, chairman of the Russian electricity monopoly, RAO Unified Energy Systems (UES), confirmed August 6 that the company had purchased a 75 percent stake in Georgias AES-Telasi joint venture from AES Silk Road, a subsidiary of the US-based AES Corp. The purchase price was not disclosed. The deal gives UES a virtual lock on Georgias domestic electricity market. The deals public-relations value came to the fore in Chubais press conference, when he declared: “Systematic power supply to Tbilisi is our main goal.” These promises almost always gain steam in Georgia, where power outages occur several times a year. Chubais also promised to consider reducing Georgias often-cripplingly high rates, which average around 6.5 cents per kilowatt.
That article restates that observers felt Shevardnadze was agreeing to the deal with Russia in order to gain support during the parliamentary elections as it was believed his party would be ‘hard pressed’ to win fairly due to its unpopularity. Eduard initially claimed the deal occurred behind his back but it appears to have been months in the making and could have been blocked by him. He maintained it would mean lower energy costs for Georgians.
Are the opposition leaders U.S. sponsored? What is going on with the vote?
Again from the Eurasianet article;
Opposition leaders have focused on the UES deal, vowing to annul it. Even if they wrest control of Parliament on November 2, though, it is unclear how extensively Georgian officials have cemented UES dominance. It is also unclear what legacy Georgias latest blackout will leave.
According to Vladimir Socor, IASPS Senior Fellow Institute for Advanced Strategic & Political Studies:
Contrary to both the popular and pro-Western elite expectations, these elections did not remove the parliamentary logjam that had in recent years blocked political and economic reforms. On the contrary, these elections have resulted in a hung legislature and reduced the convinced reformers to perhaps a third or a quarter of the parliamentary seats. Under the party-list system:
–the Coalition for a New Georgia (hereafter CNG), pro-presidential, but otherwise highly heterogeneous, has obtained 20.5 percent of the votes cast;
–Revival Union, personal instrument of Ajarias ruler Aslan Abashidze, 18.5 percent, upsetting the political balance in the entire country;
–National Movement-Democratic Front (hereafter NMDF), led by the main adversary of Shevardnadze, perceived right-winger Mikheil Saakashvili, 18 percent;
–the Democrats, led by incumbent Parliament chairwoman Nino Burjanadze and former Parliament chairman Zurab Zhvania, fully pro-Western though in the anti-presidential camp, 8 percent;
–New Right, led by Davit Gamkrelidze and Levan Gachechiladze, a pro-business and pro-American party, 7.5 percent.
Other parties fell below the 7 percent threshold of parliamentary representation.
These are the preliminary official returns, released by the Central Electoral Commission as of this writing. The CEC is still counting votes from problematic electoral precincts, continually adjusting only the decimal points in the parties scores.
The opposition has conducted its own exit polls and parallel tabulations, for the most part selectively and through spot-checks. Citing its data, it claims 26 to 27 percent for NMDF, and 10 to 11 percent for the Burjanadze-Zhvania Democrats. This became the main basis for accusing the authorities of fraud.
End of Excerpt.
I inserted the last two links.
From the first, an interview conducted by EurasiaNet with Georgian CEC Chairwoman Nana Devdariani:
EurasiaNet: Opposition leaders who are protesting the official preliminary results are citing the information delivered by Fair Elections. You can see a substantial difference between the CEC results and the results announced by the NGO. Can you explain how the totals can be so different?
Devdariani: The Fair Elections NGO counted the votes in 600 precincts. But the overall number of precincts is 2,870. Why should we rely on information from 600 precincts, when the list of precincts is three times larger? To follow Fair Elections logic, the CEC does not need to count all the votes. … Look at the results coming from the various regions and you will see the extent of disparities. Some regions voters cast their ballots mostly for one of the parties, another region supported another party, and so forth. … If you will file results from a part of precincts, you will never get the real picture.
EurasiaNet: What about government pressure?
Devdariani: Authorities have long ago lost any hopes of this kind. That happened as far back as three years ago. They realized that putting pressure on me is useless. Now, what is most important, the opposition has to understand the same thing. What I am saying is that no matter what anybody would like or dislike about the election outcome, I will never falsify the voting results.
Found by branching out from the second link:
In October 2002, a national coalition forged with the help of the Democracy Coalition Project was established in Georgia. Several leading Georgian NGOs and think tanks, including the Caucasus Institute for Peace, Democracy, and Development, Former Political Prisoners for Human Rights, Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association, International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy, Liberty Institute, Partnership for Social Initiatives, and the Centre for Social Studies, have joined forces to work together on the following issues: (1) civil and political rights and freedoms; (2) rule of law, responsible governance and civic participation; (3) economic liberties; and (4) democracy promotion in foreign policy.
An initiative of the Open Society Institute, the project was inspired by a landmark international political event in Warsaw, Poland in June 2000, in which over 100 governments participated. In an effort to further consolidate their dedication to democratic principles, they agreed to endorse the Warsaw Declaration, which commits them to build a Community of Democracies as an association of democratic states dedicated to strengthening democratic values and institutions at home and abroad. For more information about the Warsaw Declaration, click here.
Where was IFES during the recent Azerbaijan presidential election, or should I ask, were they there?
Juan Cole comments on concerns for lack of transparency in upcoming elections of a transitional authority in Iraq and warnings of demonstrations.
Wired News reports:
California will become the first state requiring all electronic voting machines produce a voter-verifiable paper receipt.
Tom Hayden reporting on the FTAA demonstrations in Miami.
The F.B.I compiling lists on demonstrators.
Demonstrators fired on in Kabul.
Please see the action alert in the extended entry.
Continue reading ‘Brutality in Miami’
The situation in Georgia continues to be bad news for Eduard Shevardnadze.
Last Thursday, the Central Election Commission of Georgia declared his victory in the disputed Nov. 2nd parliamentry vote.
This led to calls for civil disobedience, a velvet revolution, and demonstrations which forced Shevardnadze to flee from parliament mid-speech and retreat, once again, from the capital.
Opposition politician Nino Burdzhanadze has taken on his position for the time being.
Widely popular among women, she has been twice elected to Georgia’s parliament since she ended lengthy studies and consulting work at the Environment Ministry and parliament’s Committee on Foreign Relations.
Like Saakashvili, Burdzhanadze once backed Georgia’s now embattled president, who took power in 1992 after a period of huge upheaval following the collapse of communism.
She has called on opposition activists not to turn their wrath over the modern Georgia’s dire straits into attacks on the 75-year-old Shevardnadze. At the same time she has been blunt in branding his administration corrupt.
“We should protect the physical security of the president, like any other citizen of this country,” she said after the opposition seized the country’s parliament on Saturday.
Shevardnadze has declared a state of emergency and is on the phone to both Putin and Colin Powell. Powell reportedly will visit Georgia ‘soon’, no date given.
A high ranking U.S. official did visit the region on Friday.
General Charles “Chuck” Wald, Deputy Commander of the US European Command, visited military installations and had talks with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev.
The Azeri state news agency quoted the general as saying that Washington was offering unspecified military aid which “is important from the point of view of regional security, including in the Caspian. The Pentagon attaches great importance to this.”
It’s a working weekend for me [getting paid for my overtime while I can] but thought I’d pass these links on for those with time to read and discuss the news:
IRAQIS ARGUE BACK
This week on http://www.openDemocracy.net, we continue our survey of Iraq under occupation. Two weeks ago we published Yahia Said’s report that civil society was re-emerging. Last week Mary Kaldor offered her view that the Coalition needed to give Iraqis time to re-establish democratic institutions. This week two contrasting views from the inside: former Iraqi officer Mazin Ezzat offers a bleaker view, and from Kurdish Northern Iraq, Ayub Nuri, a firm supporter of the invasion, says the people he interviews wish for the return of Saddam Hussein.
APRIL TO NOVEMBER: AN IRAQI JOURNEY
AYUB NURI embraced regime change with cautious hope; now, he reports widespread bitterness and disillusion with the American occupiers
http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-2-95-1589.jsp
NOT NORMAL, BUT BLEEDING
Former Iraqi officer MAZIN EZZAT, a wounded survivor of the deposed Iraqi regime, responds from Baghdad to Yahia Said’s optimism with a bleaker view of his country’s prospects
http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-2-95-1593.jsp
Common Cause reveals that although Congress approved $87b in reconstruction and defense for Iraq with the condition an IG be appointed to oversee the spending of it, George:
…released a statement announcing that the Inspector General in Iraq, “shall refrain from initiating, carrying out or completing an audit or investigation or from issuing a subpoena which requires access to sensitive operation plans” due to reasons of national security.
More information here.
In other news, as of Friday, the CPA has control of the $10b per year Oil for Food Programme.
Immediate denials that Saudi Arabia is seriously considering a nuclear programme are continuing to be challenged by reports like this one.
According to it, their reason for doing so is protection from Iran:
“The Saudi effort has been led by [Defense Minister] Prince Sultan,” a senior intelligence source said. “Sultan believes that nuclear weapons are required to save the Saudi regime from Iran.”
The Saudi discussions were prompted by Iran’s nuclear program, which the United States has asserted serves as a cover for the development of nuclear weapons. The sources said the prospect of an Iranian nuclear program by 2006 has dismayed the Saudi kingdom. During the 1980s, Saudi Arabia was said to have funded Iraq’s nuclear weapons program to balance the Iranian threat.
The Guardian reports:
Indeed, Laura Bush said that the protests against her husband’s state visit had been much smaller than she had been expecting.
Speaking after the shows by children from the Shakespeare Schools Festival, she said: “We haven’t seen that many protests. But we have seen many American flags and people welcoming us.”
“I don’t think the protests have been as large as predicted.”
The Willesden Herald shares the experience of interacting with about 200,000 of them.
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