Mikhail Saakashvili won another term of election over the weekend. With nearly all of the votes counted after Saturday's poll, remains Georgia's president. However, his opponents accused him of fraud and said they would challenge the election results in court. Although all figures were in line with pre-election polling predictions, this election invited huge disaffectedness in this small former Soviet country. The main opposition candidate, Levan Gachechiladze, refused to concede the results. He claimed that a fraud tainted the election and called for street protest in the case his concerns of holding second round of voting were not addressed. The protest took place on a snowy square in the city and dispersed by early Sunday afternoon on a major holiday in Georgia. "We have won despite pressure, despite intimidation, despite televised terror exerted against us," Gachechiladze said at the rally of several thousand people. Despite having about one year left in his five-year term, Saakashvili called the election early hoping for winning a new mandate to govern, after ordering a police crackdown on protests and declaring a state of emergency Nov. 7. , Over 500 people were wounded in the dispersing of demonstrators, none fatally. Georgia is the third-largest contributor of troops in Iraq, after only the United States and Britain, and has deployed 2,000 soldiers there. Therefore this country is important to the United States as an ally in the Iraq war. The campaign organization of Saakashvili is an U.S.-educated leader close to the Bush administration, that has cited Saakashvili's government as an example of democratic success in a region where that has been scarce. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe called the vote "in essence consistent with most OSCE and Council of Europe commitments and standards for democratic elections" ,but also noted violations. "To our knowledge, there were very few violations that could be regarded as serious." said Giorgi Kandelaki, a spokesman for the Ministry of Justice.
Writen by Zuzana Moravcova; edited by Iveta Nagyova
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