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The usual apologists for Mikheil Saakashvili's increasingly erratic rule have been out in force in the last few days following the decision of Irakli Alasania (pictured, right) to seek a broad opposition agreement on a candidate for mayor of Tbilisi.

The “Jamestown Foundation Blog” has gone so far as to state – in a typically hyperbolic commentary – that Alsania is now pro-Russian and believes “Tbilisi’s quest to remain free and integrate with the West is not only futile but inexpedient as well”.

The somewhat more reality based Michael Circe at Evolutsia.net still misses the point completely when he states “it is unclear as to whether or not Alasania’s approach is merely an act of political posturing or a genuine pivot towards Kremlin, what is clear is that Noghaideli’s overtures to Russia has had a real effect and almost certainly have contributed, by design or accident, to shifting Alasania’s orientation.”

We see no reason to believe there has been any fundamental change in Alasania's pro-western orientation (see video). After all, it is only a few weeks ago that the regime's propaganda sewer was attacking him because his family lived in New York. The idea that they are all about to move to Moscow is laughable.

The truth is much simpler – the principal architect of Alsania's tactical, and almost certainly, temporary, alliance with Zurab Noghaideli is Mikheil Saakashvili. And it is Saakashvili and his team who also seek to polarise debate in Georgia between the alternatives of “going” and “not going” to Moscow.

How so?

Well, first of all, the ruling party insisted on an electoral system that gave advantages to only one party – their own. In particular they insisted on a threshold for the mayoral elections that was so low – at 30% - that it was essentially meaningless. If, as was the existing constitutional practice in Georgia, a 50% threshold had been set, then the events of the last week would not have happened because the leading candidate of the opposition, clearly Irakli Alasania, would have known he would have gone through the first round and faced Gigi Ugulava in the second.

But with no effective threshold in place the leading opposition candidate can only hope to win if they beat Ugulava in the first round. That creates the conditions where any serious candidate has to consider what he or she can do to unify opposition forces.

But the threshold is not the only reason why the opposition needs to concentrate its forces – it is open knowledge in Tbilisi that a number of supposed opposition candidates are entirely manufactured by the regime (Nika Ivanashvili is the prime example) while others are standing because they are cut a deal with the tax authorities or are after some other political favour.

The broadcasters – under state control – have clearly decided, entirely cynically, to give all these joke and no hope candidates the same degree of exposure as anyone from an established party. Hence there is a further need to concentrate the serious offering from the opposition if only to ensure what time is avaialble is not divided between serious opponents of the regime.

And the broadcasters are also central to the creation of an entirely false divide in Georgian politics between supposedly “pro” and “anti” Russian politics. The bulk of Georgia's politicians and public are pro-western and It suits the regime to keep the debate on this level because then they can portray themselves as the defenders of the nation (even as they blast monuments to the Georgian victors of 1945 – the people who stopped racial extermination in Europe) against the traitors.

Hence every word uttered by Zurab Noghaideli is either top or second from top on the Kurieri or Qronika bulletins every night. Indeed, Noghaideli – once Saakashvili's most loyal factotum – may simply have decided to go to Moscow for “brand visibility” reasons: any viewer of Rustavi 2 or Imedi would think he has turned himself from a discredited has-been into the seond most powerful politician in the country in a few short weeks.

Having said all of the above there has to be a recognition of the political risks involved for Alasania. Not least because it is now in Noghaideli's interest to let this phase of talks and negotiations drag on for as long as possible.

Noghaideli has expressed no interest in running for mayor, so probably does not care too much about the result. Alasania, on the other hand, desperately needs to get a campaign up and running and to start hitting Gigi Ugulava on the issues. What is more he needs to get to a place where he can start to repair relations with his most natural allies in the Alliance for Georgia. That is plainly not possible while we are stuck in this period of extended horse trading.

And nor should we pretend that there has not been a price to pay. But plainly Alasania took the view that the price for purity - impotence - was the higher one.

But we are firmly of the view that the correct way to understand Alasania's moves this week is to see them as a tactical shift – and one brought on by the electoral and media environment created by Mikheil Saakashvili.