By RIA Novosti,
Tbilisi : Voting began in early parliamentary polls at 8:00 a.m. local time [04:00 GMT] in Georgia on Wednesday with the country’s opposition promising to instigate a “rebellion” if they suspect the elections of being rigged.
Voting will not be held in the country’s two breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the cause of recent rising tensions with Russia.
Pro-Western Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s ruling United National Movement is widely expected to win the vote. Opposition leaders have pledged however to start a “people’s rebellion” if there is any suspicion that the elections have been fixed.
The United National Movement currently holds a two-thirds majority in the country’s 150-seat parliament.
These are the seventh parliamentary elections to be held in Georgia since it proclaimed independence in 1991. The country last held parliamentary polls in March 2004.
The main opposition group is a nine party coalition led by Levan Gachechiladze, Saakashvili’s main rival in the disputed presidential elections in January. The coalition, United Opposition-National Council-Rights, has accused Saakashvili of corruption, and was formed late last year as anti-Saakashvili street protests shook the capital, Tbilisi.
Saakashvili’s Western allies expressed their concern as riot police using water cannons and heavy handed tactics cracked down on opposition protestors during the demonstrations. Both the present early parliamentary polls and January’s early presidential elections were announced by Saakashvili, who himself came to power in 2004 following a popular “Rose Revolution” uprising, during the protests.
Georgia’s NATO bid was “postponed” by the military alliance in April during a summit in Bucharest, the organization saying that it would review Tbilisi’s application in December. NATO also said it wanted to see “free and fair parliamentary elections,” in Georgia.
Another reason for NATO’s decision not to grant Georgia a road map for membership was the “frozen conflicts” in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Tensions between Moscow and Tbilisi have escalated rapidly since Russia’s former president Vladimir Putin called for closer ties between Moscow and the two breakaway republics in mid-April.
Gachechiladze has said he favors dialogue rather than confrontation with Russia over the issue of the breakaway republics.
Nine political parties and three coalitions are running in the polls, which are set to be monitored by a combined group of some 5,000 international and local observers. Half of the seats in parliament will be filled by voting for parties and the other half via voting for individual candidates. Some 3.5 million Georgians are eligible to take part in the elections.