Mikheil Saakashvili today appeared to set his sights on sixty years of unbroken rule by his United National Movement - comparing his party to Japan's Liberal Democrats (though mistaking the facts about that party's 54 year rule).

Speaking to ruling party MPs in Batumi today, he said:

"the National Movement is in the government for 7 years and some say it is too much. However, one of the parties was governing Japan for 60 years, though nobody had said that there was no democracy in Japan."

Japan's LDP governed from 1955 to 2009 with only an 11 month break in the early 1990s. In that time Japan was widely criticised as a socially authoritarian society with a corrupt and imperfect democracy that had failed to face up to its role in the second world war. However there is no doubting its economic success over most of this period: ending cronic poverty and hunger in Japan's rural hinterland and making the country one of the world's leading industrial powers.

The UNM controls every level of government in Georgia, having retained control of all local authorities in 30 May's elections.

Women were 20% more likely to vote for Gigi Ugulava than men in 30 May's Tbilisi mayoral election - suggesting the opposition's frequent reliance on swagger and threats of resorting to "the street" or promising revolutionary upheaval decisively alienated female voters.

The Georgian Public Broadcaster has published some more details of their exit poll for the Tbilisi elections and it shows 63% of women backing Ugulava, compared to 53% of men. As the exit poll was broadly accurate the figures can be assumed to point to a real "gender gap" facing opposition politicians.

Women significantly outnumber men in Georgia, partly as a continuing, if now fading, legacy of the Great Patriotic War of 1941 - 1945, which saw men in particular in the Soviet Union die in vast numbers resisting the Nazi invasion, but also because men are generally more likely to die younger: winning women's votes is essential for any realistic hope of breaking the ruling party's absolute grip on power through the ballot box.

Across global electorates women voters are often those most fearful of change and upheaval, possibly because so many of them put their families and children as their main concern. They are also generally less interested in "hard" economic facts and debate and more concerned with social issues and public services. Above all they react strongly to machismo and threatening rhetoric.

In Georgia this is all somewhat balanced by the fact that a significant number of men seem to believe that women are incapable of governing - a response to pollsters' questions that dropped towards zero in most western European countries in the 1970s and 1980s but still seems to run strongly south of the Caucasus.

Two opposition parties - the Alliance for Georgia and the Christian Democrats - seemed to make a conscious effort to promote women in their campaign: both topped their lists for the Tbilisi city assembly with a woman. But with the UNM armed with a massive budget and supported by the experienced political operatives of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner they were always struggling.

Other opposition parties - particularly the National Council seemed to make a virtue of their maleness and even their willingness to fight the authorities on the streets: plainly a self-defeating approach to winning votes.

A parliamentary deputy from the ruling United National Movement today told fellow MPs that the government was "immoral" and its behaviour "unacceptable" in restricting pension rises to Tbilisi: a move widely seen as party of the ruling circle's effort to get mayor Gigi Ugulava re-elected.

Temur Charkviani said that the decision had caused "outrage" and demanded all pensioners were given the 10 Georgian Lari rise next year.

The ruling United National Movement, which won a landslide victory in 30 May's elections, did so with the help of a spending binge of 14 million Georgian Lari - approximately $7.6 million.

The UNM managed to poll 1,119,664 votes across Georgia, meaning each vote cost the ruling party over $6.70 - more than Republican loser John McCain managed to spend in the 2008 presidential election in the United States, the richest country in the world (though not at the level of Barack Obama).

Western statements that elections in Georgia had become fairer need to be seen in the context of a ruling party that can easily outspend all other parties added together many times over: and questions should be asked about how it is that the UNM can access such funds and other parties cannot.

We are still awaiting for other parties to give their figures - but the Christian Democrats, visibly the second richest party in terms of advertising, say they spent 700,000 GEL - one twentieth of the funds available to the ruling party: meaning each one of their 203,297 votes cost $1.86.

Close to one in three of the population of Georgia survive on less than $2 a day.

The bias in the electoral system has seen the ruling United National Movement take 78% of the seats in the Tbilisi city assembly (the sakrebulo) despite winning just 52% of the vote.

The opposition, despite having won 48% get just 11 of the sakrebulo's 50 seats, the other 39 going to the UNM. In effect this means the UNM got 12 more seats than would be awarded under a fair system.

The discrepency comes because although half the seats were elected on a 'proportional' basis they are not a top-up as in (say) the German additional member system. So while the UNM won every one of the 25 'majoritarian' (actually plurality) seats, they also got 14 of the 25 proportional seats.

If the proportional seats had been distributed as additional top up seats under the D'Hondt system then then the UNM would have retained their majority but would have had 27 seats and not 39, being allocated just two seats from the 25 proportional block, the Alliance would have had 10 seats (they were allotted just 5), the Christian Democrats 6 (actually won 3), and the Industrialists 3 (actually won 1).

Although this system currently suits the ruling party, in reality it could hand majority control over to a party winning less votes than others - all they would have to do is pick up a sizable number of the 'majoritarian' seats and then top that up from the proportional list.