Category: Irakli Alasania

Alasania says his priority is the voters, others search for unity

March 12, 2010 by georgiamedia

Irakli Alasania, leader of the Alliance for Georgia, has again said that his priority now is to focus on communicating with voters and not on another road of internal opposition discussions.

Yesterday Alasania, who is the Alliance's candidate for mayor, met Levan Gachechiladze, who as the poll topping (in Tbilisi) opposition candidate for president in 2008 and founder of the "Defend Georgia" campaign, is an important figure at the heart of many opposition networks.

Both Alasania and a rival group of opposition parties - who have defended the idea of the opposition independently seeking to negotiate with the authorities in Moscow - have been chasing Gachechiladze's support this week.

The second group hope to entice Gachechiladze to stand against Alasania, hoping that his past popularity in Tbilisi will force the former UN ambassador out of the race. They have seriously fallen out with the Alliance over its opposition to co-operating with Zurab Noghaideli - part of the rival group - who has signed a treaty of alliance between his Movement for a Fair Georgia and Vladimir Putin's United Russia.

Alasania, for his part wants to keep Gachechiladze out of the race, but also hopes to have him mobilise opposition networks in favour of his (Alasania's) candidacy.

Alasania has also warned that his rivals' plan to delay a decision on naming an opposition candidate until 9 April is little more than an electoral gift to incumbent mayor Gigi Ugulava in any case. So he has been talking tough in public - warning he will not stand down regardless of Gachechiladze's decision, while also courting Gachechiladze in private.

Today Alasania kept his campaign up saying: "The relationship with electorate is more important today than the ongoing processes in the opposition. Yesterday's meeting with Levan Gachechiladze was very interesting. We talked about effective coordination among the opposition parties during the pre-election campaign."

Others in the opposition have kept up the pressure for unity. Gia Tsagareishvili, the opposition MP who, despite rejecting his allies' decision to boycott parliament enjoys wide respect as an "irreconcilable" with Saakashvili, today met Gachechiladze and urged him to row in behind Alasania.

"If Levan Gachechiladze enters the field of battle, it will damage Irakli Alasania, Gachechiladze himself and the opposition electorate," he asaid afterwards, adding "I think Alasania needs support not only from Levan Gachechiladze, but from other political leaders too."

The rival group today rallied their supporters in Gurjaani, to the east of the capital.

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.

Public broadcaster working with smear and propaganda channel: the proof

March 11, 2010 by georgiamedia

Georgia's public broadcaster is working with "Real TV" - a vile and vicious propaganda channel allegedly set up by the Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili's former chief spin doctor and dedicated to smearing opposition politicians in the crudest of ways - and we can prove it.

Real TV - allegedly established by Guram Donadze, the former spokesman for Merabishvili who was forced out of office after the Sandro Gigvliani murder case - has broadcast smear after smear against opposition politicians and anybody else who has displeased the regime (one of the more recent victims was Vakhtang Komakhidze, a journalist who has applied for political assylum in Switzerland after what he says was threats against his family).

That Real TV co-operates with Imedi is no surprise - and although Imedi is fully controlled by the regime and funded by "state aid", the government can hide behind the claim that it is a private sector company.

But the public broadcaster has no excuse - co-operating with Real TV puts a government owned and funded institution firmly and undeniably in league with a political smear operation.

Yet here are pictures from last night's meeting with Levan Gachechiladze and Irakli Alasania's Our Georgia Free Democrats:

Both pictures show OGFD's Victor Dolidze being interviewed and they clearly also show that one person, using two hands, is holding the microphones for Imedi (blue), the Public Broadcaster's First Channel (purple) and Real TV (yellow and black).

Want more proof? Look at this slowed down footage of Levan Gachechiladze being interviewed later in Maestro's report. Maestro's microphone (orange with a large მ for მაესტრო) clearly moves independently while at least three of the other four (the orange one is Rustavi 2) once more move as a block.

This is not a trivial matter. The lack of competition between the three national TV stations is already a sign of the dismal quality of Georgian TV journalism - the stations do not chase the news or hope to break stories, merely report the same things to the satisfaction of their propaganda masters. But openly co-operating with a highly partisan and vicious station like Real TV shows a complete lack of ethics by the management of the public broadcaster. They are no longer even pretending to be independent.

Finally - here is the full report.

Dirty politics at play as rumours replace fact in mayoral election

March 10, 2010 by georgiamedia

There are clear signs that someone, though it is not clear who, is out to manufacture a split between Levan Gachechiladze (pictured, below, right) and Irakli Alasania over the Tbilisi mayoral elections.

Today the Alliance for Georgia have been forced to deny that Gachechiladze and Alasania had a stand up fight yesterday: in fact, as Alasania was at a family funeral in Samregelo and Gachechiladze was in Tbilisi there was no chance of them meeting.

And Alliance member Koka Guntsadze has also been moved to deny reports that he has left the Alliance after a meeting with Gachechiladze: "The information is groundless. I have not left the Alliance, and I am not going to. As for my meeting with Levan Gachechiladze, he is my friend and I will always meet my friends."

Gachechiladze and Alasania, while very different characters, have been close political associates over the last year, despite their different approaches: the decisions of Alasania to launch his own political party, Our Georgia Free Democrats, while Gachechiladze looked to mobilse wider civil society through "Defend Georgia" were consciously co-ordinated and deliberate.

And splitting the two would be a big prize for anyone determined to either clear the way for the government by hobbling the opposition or seeking to weaken and marginalise the electoral approach to opposition progress advocated by Alasania.

Of course, even if all the stories of division are made up, the mere fact that they have enough credibility that they have to be denied is good news for Tbilisi's incumbent mayor Gigi Ugulava. He, assisted by a huge inflow of state money and expert political advice, has successfully projected himself as someone above the day to day squabbles of politics and who is only interested in Tbilisi.

It is fair to say that, despite the fact that he widely regarded as the most hardline and authoritarian of the ruling United National Movement's leaders - even said to be the man who demanded the police attack peaceful demonstators on 7 November 2007, against the advice of the regime hardman Vano Merabishvili - Ugulava is currently leading a charmed life and that the opposition have yet to even lay a glove on him in the fight for the mayoralty.

Uguglava's strategy will no doubt be to stay out of the election battle for as long as he can - as he is under no pressure while the opposition is seen to squabble. It is little wonder that Alasania is so opposed to the idea of waiting another month before declaring who the opposition's candidate should be: that would be a month when Ugulava doled out the goodies while the opposition slugged it out amongst itself.

There are clear signs that many in the wider Tbilisi opposition community see the danger that now confronts the opposition: having, somewhat arrogantly, assumed that they only needed to turn up in the capital to win, the opposition now faces losing an election - and badly - to the UNM in what is meant to be the bastion of the anti-Saakashvili forces.

Things might be so bad for the opposition that the UNM could ease up on cheating and intimidation: simply relying on their media lie machine to whip home the voters.

That, at least, must be one of the reasons why so many opposition groups today issued an appeal for the politicians to unite behind Alasania.

"No time is left for delayed negotiations and consultations, which causes nihilism and confusion in the society. We appeal to all opposition parties to support Irakli Alasania in the elections, as a joint candidate is the way towards a victory," says the joint statement.

The list of signatories is impressive not necessarily because they represent a hidden army of thousands of supporters - joining an expliciting political grouping in Tbilisi is to risk one's job and livlihood and so many steer clear, but because it includes some - but not all - of the civil society groups most often identified as least willing to look for centre-ground solutions and compromises, the very ground that Alasania seeks to take the opposition into as a way of maximising votes.

 The signatories include the Georgian Academy; Former Political Prisoners for Human Rights; the Movement for 7 November; the Movement ‘Why?’; the Democratic Institute; the coalition For Our Rights; organization ‘Galavani’, the United Students’ Front; the Center for Ethnic and Confessional Relations; the Center for Civil and Political Rights and; the Center for Militants’ Rights