Supporters of President Mikhail Saakashvili swept to victory in Georgia's parliamentary election, according to preliminary results released Monday, giving him crucial backing as he tries to crack down on corruption and rein in one of the country's restive provinces. The voting Sunday marked the last stage of the country's transition out of the era of Eduard Shevardnadze, who was driven from office by public protests that Saakashvili spearheaded. The protests were touched off by widespread fraud in Nov. 2 parliamentary elections, and Sunday's vote replaced that annulled ballot. Saakashvili's National Movement-Democrat party had 76 percent of the vote, with about 9 percent of ballots counted, the Central Elections Commission said. Only one other party made it past the 7 percent minimum necessary to gain seats in the legislature: the moderate opposition Right Opposition-Industrialists party, which won 7.5 percent. An exit poll conducted by several non-governmental organizations showed Saakashvili's party winning 78.6 percent of the vote. "We did everything to make these elections fair," Saakashvili said late Sunday. "This was the first election campaign in Georgia's modern history in which, outside Adzharia, not a single instance of violence against opposition parties was recorded."
The voting commission said intimidation marred balloting in Adzharia, the restive province whose leader, Aslan Abashidze, has challenged Saakashvili's authority. But it wasn't enough to invalidate all results from the region. Abashidze's Renaissance party won a slight majority of votes in the region, said Zaza Daraseliya, a spokesman for the Foundation for Free Elections. Monitors for the non-governmental organization counted about 48 percent of votes going to Abashidze's party, as opposed to 44 percent going to Saakashvili's. Central Elections Commission chief Zurab Chiaberashvili said "chaos" broke out at two Adzharian polling stations, spoiling the ballots. He said there were reports of "physical abuse and intimidation of the elections commission members" at several other stations, the ITAR-Tass news agency said. Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania, who spent election day in Adzharia, said Monday that the vote had gone off "without major violations." Abashidze claimed that Georgian special forces disguised as observers were arrested at a polling station and "it is those people who could have organized riots," the Interfax news agency reported. |