Georgia ruling party heads to election win, opposition claims fraud

May 22, 2008, 7:43 GMT

Local Georgian election commission members open a ballot box to counting ballots at a polling station in the centre of Tbilisi, Georgia, 21 May 2008. Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili accused Russia of aggravating the situation in the country\'s breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia on Wednesday, as the Georgians voted in parliamentary elections. EPA/DMITRY KHRUPOV

Tbilisi - Georgia's ruling party and its head President Mikhail Saakashvili were on track Thursday for a parliamentary election blowout, as opposition leaders charged vote fraud.

Saakashvili's United Nation Movement party was likely to capture 62.8 per cent of the popular vote, while its closet rival, the United Opposition, would receive only 13.6 per cent, said Zurab Kachkachishvili, a Central Election Commission (CEC) spokesman citing partial ballot counts.

The national vote taking place Wednesday generally went smoothly. Final results from the poll selecting the Caucausian republic's next parliament are expected on Friday.

Two smaller anti-Saakashvili parties the Christian Democrat Movement and the Labour Party, also were likely to place MPs in the next legislature, having received 8.6 and 6.1 per cent of the popular vote respectively, Kachkachishvili said.

A party must obtain 5 per cent or more of the national vote, in order to send representatives to parliament, according to Georgian constitutional statute. Eight parties failed to overcome the barrier.

The tentative results if born out by the final count would give Saakashvili and his party continued total dominance of Georgian politics, including the ability to amend the constitution at will.

Turn out in the vote appeared relatively weak, with only 55 per cent of registered voters actually casting ballots, according to CEC statistics.

The tenative official results made public by the CEC Thursday morning roughly matched exit polls made public immediately after voting ceased at eight p.m. Wednesday evening.

Opposition forces held a rally at Tbilisi's Palace of Sport into the early morning hours of Thursday, attracting some 3,000-5,000 participants.

Gia Tortladze, a senior member of the United Opposition party, harangued attendees at the gathering, saying in part 'If the official results match the exit polls, the authorities will have a people's revolution on their hands.'

A parallel ballot count showed opposition forces collectively actually had defeated Saakashvili's party, Tortladze and other opposition speakers claimed.

But the crowd, made up of a mix of students and middle-aged opposition supporters gathered in a working class Tbilisi district far from the city centre, hardly seemed to eyewitnesses the stuff of massed demonstrations and open confrontation with the state.

Government security presence early Thursday morning at the opposition gathering was low key, with uniformed cops staying in the background, police cruisers passing by every few minutes. One plain clothes officer was moving through the crowd and photographing selected participants.

Anti-Saakashvili demonstrations last year ended in violence after the US-educated Georgian President unleashed riot police on the crowd.

Thursday news reports brought additional details on a recent shooting incident on border between Georgia and its renegade province Abkhazia on Wednesday, when two busloads of ethnic Georgians attempted to travel from Abkhazia to Georgia to cast ballots.

Initially conflicting government reports had solidified on Thursday into claims that 'unknown persons' opened fire on the vehicles with automatic weapons and grenade launchers, injuring several riders.

Georgia's state-controlled television Thursday showed images of an ensuing 20-minute firefight between Georgian army troops and purportedly Abkhazian opponents. The loud exchange of rifle and machine gun fire produced no casualties on the Georgian side.

Television images from the scene included a pair of destroyed buses, Georgian soldiers firing without aiming, and a Georgian woman with a bullet or fragment injury to her back.

Abkhazian officials denied their troops had done the shooting. An officer with Russian peacekeepers in the region confirmed a firefight had taken place, but declined to speculate on its participants.