Uncertain Democracy. Lincoln A. Mitchell
Zhvania’s role in the election partially undermined his reformist credentials and weakened his position with the Georgian people. One key decisions for which Zhvania’s critics held him responsible was raising the threshold for parties seeking representation in parliament from 5 to 7 percent. Importantly, most followers of Georgia in the West, still wanting to believe the best about Shevardnadze, never really understood the extent of fraud in that election, or of Zhvania’s critical role in committing that fraud. This was reflected in the generally positive assessment of the election by ODIHR.
The CUG efforts to ensure a resounding victory led to multiple voting, particularly in the heavily ethnic Azeri region of Kvemo Kartli and the heavily Armenian region of Samskhe-Javakheti; it saw faulty voter lists throughout Georgia and widespread bribery and intimidation. However, this was not enough to guarantee the result the CUG wanted, so after Election Day the counting process was falsified as well. Most at stake was which parties would cross the 7 percent threshold and send members to parliament. Because this threshold was relatively high, and there were 150 seats to be divided among parties that crossed it, any party that received 7 percent of the vote was guaranteed at least ten seats in the new parliament, enough to form an official faction.11 In addition to keeping some parties out of parliament, the CUG sought to raise its proportion of the vote so as to have the largest number of MPs possible.
Going into the election two parties, the CUG and Revival, were all but guaranteed to pass the 7 percent threshold. But it was not at all clear which, if any, other parties would pass the threshold. Revival was in a strong position because, as the ruling party in Ajara, it had the ability to steal as many votes as needed to get into parliament. Not surprisingly, a number of individuals and political parties sought to make a deal with one of these parties to run as a coalition or for their leaders be given a place on either the CUG or Revival list.
The result of the election was that two parties, the CUG and Revival, passed the threshold easily. The early results showed that two more parties, the moderate or pseudo-opposition Industrialists and the radical, anti-Shevardnadze Labor Party were close. Ultimately, the Industrialists made it into parliament with 7.08 percent of the vote, while Labor narrowly missed with 6.69 percent of the vote. The widely held, probably accurate, belief in Georgia was that the Industrialists were allowed into parliament because they came up with more money to bribe the election committee during the counting period.
The ODIHR report, while not explicitly supporting the Labor Party claim that it was deliberately kept out of parliament, makes it clear that there were many problems with the counting procedure at the central level.
The procedures followed were not sufficiently transparent. The figures released by the CEC (Central Election Commission) were based on the summation of precinct results arriving by fax from various DECs (District Election Commissions) in a random manner. … The tabulation was conducted in the CEC premises, which was not accessible to party representatives. Even some CEC members, particularly those from the opposition, were denied access to these premises. … The tabulation was conducted by a limited number of CEC technical staff with standard statistical software, which did not include special safeguards against technical errors. In case such errors occurred and they needed to be corrected, no trace was left for the wrong record after the corrections were inserted.12
The Labor Party and its leader, Shalva Natalashvili, were furious over these results and brought about several unsuccessful court cases seeking entrance into parliament. Natalashvili’s public anger at the CUG and Shevaradnadze did not subside over the following years. He held a special disdain for Zurab Zhvania, whom he seemed to view as a false democrat who had personally led the drive to keep Labor out of parliament.
The new parliament, like the old, was to be dominated by a diverse CUG block consisting of reformers, corrupt business and political interests, and former communists. Neither of the two opposition parties figured to pose a serious threat. Revival, if left to do what it wanted in Ajara, was not going to make trouble for the CUG. The Industrialists, led by beer magnate Gogi Topadze, were not strongly opposed to the CUG and would cooperate in exchange for support for their business interests. Thus, the major challenge for the CUG, and party leader in parliament Zurab Zhvania, was to hold the party together. This would prove to be difficult as the tensions within the party continued to grow. The roots of the party system of 2003, which would eventually lead to the Rose Revolution and the overthrow of Shevardnadze’s regime, lay in the CUG’s inability to remain a single cohesive party in the face of growing internal tension.
Structural issues contributed to the breakdown of the CUG in parliament after the 1999 election. The difference between a legislature organized by party and one organized by faction is subtle but, it turned out, extremely important. Once the parliament is elected, rather than forming large blocs for each party, any group of at least ten MPs can form a faction. A faction in this sense does not refer to an informal group of likeminded members within a party. In the Georgian parliament, factions are recognized formally. Each faction is given an office and representation on the committee that sets the agenda, media attention, and other perks. Thus, there is an incentive for the parliament to be disunified, which of course contributes to an imbalance between the executive and legislative branches of government. This structure is not at all uncommon in the former Soviet Union and contributes to weak legislatures across the region.
Mikheil Saakashvili was the first reform politician to formally break with Shevardnadze. Saakashvili’s return to Georgia and tenure as justice minister and then MP had not been easy. While he won accolades from the Georgian media, civil society, and many international observers for his uncompromising efforts to fight corruption, these efforts were significantly less appreciated from colleagues in the government, many of whom were deeply involved in the corruption. Saakashvili became increasingly frustrated before resigning in September 2001. After resigning, he ran for parliament as a majoritarian from Vake rayon in Tbilisi in late 2001 with support from the CUG. Vake is the most visible and elite rayon in Georgia, so the office of MP from Vake takes on a special significance. Saakashvili handily won the election. Saakashvili’s break with Shevardnadze was not entirely complete at that time, as Shevardnadze campaigned in support of Saakashvili during his race for parliament.
In 2000, while serving in parliament as a CUG majoritarian MP, Saakashvili became increasingly exasperated with Shevardnadze’s failure to support a reform agenda. Finally, in October 2001, he publicly broke with Shevardnadze and announced the formation of his own party, the National Movement-United Front (NM). He was able to persuade more than ten of his fellow MPs, all originally elected as CUG members, to join him in forming an NM faction in parliament. Thus, although the NM had not been in existence during the 1999 elections, it was formally recognized as a faction in parliament with all the requisite perks.
Saakashvili’s departure from the CUG was seen as a blow to Shevardnadze, but because Saakashvili had always been an outsider in the CUG, never attaining major party leadership positions, it was not devastating for Shevardnadze, who was still able to maintain his reputation as a reformer by pointing to another young reform leader, Zurab Zhvania, who was still speaker of parliament and held a leadership position in the CUG.
Zhvania’s break from Shevardnadze in fall 2001 was more devastating for Shevardnadze and not easy for Zhvania, who agonized for weeks before publicly separating himself from the man he considered his mentor and who often spoke about Zhvania like a son. Zhvania not only resigned as speaker of parliament and formed his own party, the United Democrats (UD), but he brought 22 MPs with him to make the UD faction the biggest in parliament. Zhvania was replaced as speaker by Nino Burjanadze, who would wait until the summer 2003 before breaking with Shevardnadze and joining the opposition.
Before the formation of the NM and the UD, led by Saakashvili and Zhvania respectively, another faction had broken off from the CUG. The New Rights, led by insurance magnate David Gamkrelidze—who, like Zhvania and Saakashvili, was under forty, spoke English, and was brought into politics by Shevardnadze—also claimed to be a reform oriented opposition party. Unlike the UD or the NM, the New Rights was not widely viewed as an opposition party. Instead, many saw them as a party of businesspeople supported, or even created, by Shevardnadze as an attempt to shift attention and support away from the growing opposition and demand for reform within the CUG.13