GEORGIA: Defiant Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili votes in Georgia local polls

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili voted on Thursday (October 5) in local elections which will test his popularity after a major confrontation with Russia. A beaming Saakashvili clutched his baby son and told reporters at a polling station he wanted to "transform the country into a fully-fledged liberal European-style democracy". The Georgian president said it was business as usual in his country, now target of wide range of Russian sanctions and strong crticism from political leaders in Moscow. "The way we have been responding to some overreaction and irrational statements has been to move on, to move on with our development; during the last few days, no one broke our schedule here, nobody reacted in any special way," he said, flanked by his Dutch wife, Sandra. Moscow has severed transport and postal links with Georgia after Tbilisi briefly arrested four Russian army officers last week and accused them of spying. The row was a flashpoint for deeper tensions caused by Saakashvili's pro-Western policies. Analysts say Saakashvili's National Movement party is likely to win the local council elections in which 3.2 million Georgians can vote. Voting will continue until 1600 GMT with the first results expected on Friday. Since coming to power in the 2003 "Rose Revolution", the charismatic and outspoken president has sought to move former Soviet state Georgia firmly out of Russia's orbit and to forge closer ties with the United States and European Union. Eduard Shevardnadze, the man ousted from office by Saakahsvili in 2003, also appeared to lend his support to the current government. "I accept this authority, this government that we (Georgians) have at present, and we must follow the rules set-up by the authorities," said the former president as he voted in Tbilisi. Saakashvili has presided over some of Georgia's highest economic growth rates since the fall of the Soviet Union, launching a campaign against corruption and starting major school- and road-building programmes. But domestic opponents say widespread poverty remains, the judicial system is in dire need of reform and human rights have not been fully respected. The spying row has overshadowed the election campaign in which Saakashvili's National Movement faces the Republican and Labour and the Industry Saves Georgia parties. None of the parties has taken an openly pro-Russian line, hardly surprising in view of strong local feeling against what Georgian ministers describe as Russian bullying. Georgian officials say the Russian sanctions will not harm the country too badly unless Moscow decides to use its most powerful weapon, gas supplies, on which the 5 million people of Georgia are fully dependent. One of Georgia's main energy groups told Reuters that Russia's giant gas monopoly Gazprom had indicated unofficially it wanted to raise prices sharply, and maybe double them. Russian authorities have stopped issuing visas to Georgians, raided Georgian-owned businesses in Moscow and indicated they will try to stop up to one million Georgians working in Russia from sending money home. Moscow was also pressurising its ally Belarus to follow its lead and stop issuing visas to Georgians to stop them from getting into Russia through the open border Moscow has with Belarus, Russian agencies reported.

ITN Source | October 6, 2006

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