Category: Alliance for Georgia

Alasania says he wants alliance with Gachechiladze but his priority is talking to voters

March 11, 2010 by georgiamedia

Irakli Alasania has again stated that he wants a strong alliance between himself and Levan Gachechiladze but that he thinks the key priority is to talk to the voters of Tbilisi, rather than spend more time arguing about internal opposition agreement, so he will not be withdrawing his candidacy for the mayor of the capital regardless of the circumstances.

Speaking before meeting representatives of the Ossetian community in Tbilisi the leader of the Alliance for Georgia stated "All kinds of rumors about my withdrawal of candidacy to anyone’s benefit are baseless. I have already started election campaign and nothing will change in this decision.

"I must speak with the voters about the issues I intend to do if I win in the elections and why they must vote for me."

Signs, today, are that an agreement between Gachechiladze, who was the main opposition candidate for president in 2008 and who topped the poll in Tbilisi, and Alasania are close, prompting angry comments from the supporters of the idea of an opinion poll/door-to-door survey about Alasania's confederates in the Alliance for Georgia who they regard as having wrecked an earlier attempt at unity on a wide basis.

In a commentary generally negative about Alasania but focusing on the opposition's need to break out of endless internal wrangles and actually start canvassing for votes, Professor Ghia Nodia says that seeking an agreement that included Zurab Noghaideli would likely hobble any opposition campaign as it would suggest both a weakness of democratic intention and ambivanence towards Russian interference and occupation. As Alasania has staked his claim on the basis of both opposition to revolutionary short-cuts and a patient building of national unity and western orientation he would be destoying two of his key electoral assets in pursuit of unity.

But right now there can be no doubt that incumbent mayor Gigi Ugulava has the upper hand: if the opposition can start to offer a coherent challenge on the issues facing ordinary Tbilisuri then that might change, and quickly. But everyday Ugulava's opponents talks to - or fights with - itself is another step closer to victory for Ugulava and the United National Movement.

Irakli Alasania comments on his campaign and Nino Bujanadze's trip to Moscow

March 8, 2010 by georgiamedia

Irakli Alsania, leader of the Alliance for Georgia and candidate for mayor of Tbilisi says that, although he has little money with which to mount an election campaign, he is picking up volunteers who are getting his message out door-to-door in Tbilisi.

Currently the "air war" - the electoral battle in the mass media, particularly the broadcasters - is dominated by incumbent mayor Gigi Ugulava while the opposition seem only to gain coverage for the interminable dispute over should be the single opposition candidate for the mayor's office.

But if the opposition can make inroads in the "ground war" - the hard slog of door-to-door talking and voter mobilisation they could begin to significantly dent Ugulava's undoubted current advantage.

Alasania is having to walk a fine line: pressing home his status as what most agree is the opposition's front-runner to squeeze other opposition candidates' votes while avoiding getting personally drawn into a slanging match with anyone other than the mayor - who has managed to stay above the fray precisely because of the opposition's internal divisions.

Now, says Alasania, in an interview with the Georgian Times, that has to change:

My political force, the Alliance, and myself as a candidate are going to be fully involved in campaigning, in making people understand that we are offering a change, a change for better. We are going to do a better job for them when we are the local government, in the Mayor’s office. For me these few months before the elections will be about campaigning and bringing change to the population.

...at this point we are financing the campaign with our own resources and we do not have much of an operation in the regions now for that reason. But I want to declare that we have a lot more volunteers working for us now. Door to door and town hall meetings will be important for our campaign, and these do not require much money. It requires just will and effort from the political side to be engaged in a direct dialogue with the population of Tbilisi.
 

Asked about fromer parliament speaker Nino Burjanadze's trip to Moscow, the former Georgian ambassador to the UN doubted it would have any lasting impact on Russian-Georgian relations:

I think the Georgian-Russian relationship has a future, but it will be a long time before we start political talks on the most sensitive issue for Georgia, which is the fulfillment by the Russian Federation of the agreement of August 12 2008 which requires them to leave Georgian territory. I do believe that political talks can lead naturally to the fulfillment of this agreement, but first and foremost I think we have at this point to concentrate all our efforts on containing Russia, not soliciting more aggressive behaviour from it, and start building our relationship with the Abkhazian and Ossetian population step by step. At this point I do not see any breakthrough possible through talks between the opposition and the Government of the Russian Federation. When we are in government after wining the elections, then of course we will start cementing our foreign policy priorities towards Russia as well.
 

Will Zurab Noghaideli now run for mayor?

March 8, 2010 by georgiamedia

The three parties that had backed a plan for primary to settle the question of who would run for mayor of Tbilisi on behalf of the opposition - the Conservatives, the People's Party and the Movement for a Fair Georgia - have announced that they are to use opinion polling as the basis on which to chose their candidate: but they will only poll on those parties and names who agree to their proposal.

A system of primaries will still be used - to pick individuals to run for the council (sakrebulo) in Tbilisi and also in the Georgian regions.

Koba Davitashvili, leader of the People's Party, but the blame for failing to agree a joint candidate for mayor amongst the opposition on the shoulders of Irakli Alasania and the Alliance for Georgia. He also added that the way was now open for Zurab Noghaideli and his Movement for a Fair Georgia to stand a candidate: leaving the possibility that Noghaideli, who has become a figure of enormous controversy in Georgia after his party signed an up to an alliance with Vladimir Putin's United Russia, might test his own popularity in the poll.

The Alliance for Georgia has objected to both an alliance with Noghaideli - the grouping came close to a permanent fracture after Alasania indicated he was at least prepared to talk to the former prime minister, a decision later reversed - and also to the delay that is proposed for the poll.

Today's announcement was that the result of the poll would be announced on 9 April - still over a month away. The Alliance believes that this delay - whilst good for the minor parties that are part of the grouping becaking the idea, as they will be lavished with media coverage by the regime's television statiopns, especially if they attack Irakli Alasania - will give the incumbent mayor Gigi Ugulava yet another advantage.

Ugulava has been actively running an undeclared re-election campaign - focusing on the issues such as jobs, education, crime and health that matter most to the voters - while the opposition has spent almost all its time arguing about how it should select its candidate.

Nor is it clear on what basis the poll will be taken. If it is a self-selecting ballot, or worse still, an internet poll, its scientific value will be zero and it will be open to manipulation on the grand scale. Unfortunately such "polls" are regularly reported in the Georgian media as though they were of value as opposed to just an interesting diversion. The messages of the cartoon shown here from PhD Comics is yet to break through.

Proposal for an opinion poll wins no support

March 7, 2010 by georgiamedia

The proposal of the Conservatives, People's Party and Movement for a Fair Georgia that the opposition agree a joint candidate for the mayor of Tbilisi through an opinion poll has failed to win any wider support, reports InterPressNews.

Although Irakli Alasania, leader of the Alliance for Georgia and that group's candidate for mayor of the Georgian capital had indicated his support for such an idea, he later rejected the specific proposal made - which would not have settled the issue of who the candidate would be for another six weeks - as introducing a delay that would only assist incumbent mayor Gigi Ugulava.

Alasania has since formally launched his campaign with a strong show of support from many of Tbilisi's civil society organisations.

The parties behind the proposal - who had earlier proposed a "primary" to select an opposition candidate for mayor of Tbilisi, are expected to announce their next steps tomorrow. If they decide to press on with their candidacies - the Conservatives and People's Party have both nominated their leaders as runners - they can expect to be lavished with television coverage from the regime's TV stations, who will be anxious to damage Alasania's prospects. But few believe their candidates have any realistic chance of offering a serious challenge to Ugulava.

The events of recent weeks, though, have injected a new bitterness into opposition politics - not least over attitudes to Zurab Noghaideli and Nino Burjanadze's trips to Moscow - and it is not clear if anyone will be willing to back down.