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TBILISI : Georgia's opposition on Friday accused incumbent Mikheil Saakashvili of having rigged upcoming presidential elections in advance and vowed to take to the streets of this former Soviet republic to protest the result.
Opposition candidates said the outcome had already been determined through a series of campaign violations, including media bias in favour of Saakashvili and the use of state resources to support his campaign.
"If these kinds of things continue, and I am 100 percent sure that this is continuing, then we can't recognize" the election, leading opposition candidate Levan Gachechiladze told journalists after meeting with European observers.
Authorities insisted that the election Saturday would be conducted fairly and called on the opposition to recognize the results.
The snap election, called after violent unrest in November, is seen as a crucial test of democracy for this small Black Sea country, amid allegations of opposition coup plots and meddling by former ruler Russia.
Gachechiladze said Saakashvili was planning to use "non-legal and bad exit polls" to claim victory and promised to "continue protests and everything under the constitution" to oppose him.
But David Bakradze, Saakashvili's campaign manager, said the government's unprecedented cooperation with international observers guaranteed the election would be free and fair.
"These are the first elections (in Georgia) conducted in a real competitive situation," Bakradze, also Georgia's minister for conflict resolution, told journalists Friday.
He said the opposition was mounting "a campaign to discredit the election and to create the perception" that it was unfair.
"If Saakashvili wins, they'll say 'it was not free and fair, it was rigged and that's why we lost,'" he said.
Bakradze said the opposition will have no choice but to accept the vote if foreign observers say it met international standards. He doubted many would then take part in protests.
"I don't think there will be a lot of people. There will be their activists, but then it will be seen by most of the population as something very irresponsible by the opposition. In that case, we don't expect any complications," he said.
Two other opposition candidates also threatened Friday not to recognize the vote.
David Gamkrelidze of the conservative New Rights party said Saakashvili did not have enough support to overcome the 50 percent threshold required to avoid a run-off vote in two weeks' time.
"If he decided to manipulate the results and win in the first round, I think it will be quite difficult to accept and recognize the results," Gamkrelidze told journalists.
"We think the only objective result will be a second round," he said, adding that he would support "all peaceful methods" to protest the result.
"It was not a just election so we won't recognize the results. He won't have any legitimacy from us," opposition candidate Giorgi Maisashvili also told journalists.
Saakashvili called the snap poll after violent clashes between police and anti-government protesters on November 7 and the imposition of a state of emergency that lasted nine days.
The crackdown appalled many ordinary Georgians, who had backed Saakashvili's 2003 pro-democracy Rose Revolution, and also alarmed his allies in Europe and the United States.
Hundreds of international observers have arrived in Georgia for the election and diplomats have warned Georgian efforts at integrating further with the West could be derailed if the vote is not conducted fairly.
Polls commissioned by the seven candidates in Saturday's contest offer conflicting data. But most analysts believe Saakashvili, a multilingual, US-trained lawyer, is well ahead of his nearest rival, Gachechiladze, a wine entrepreneur and lawmaker.
- AFP /ls
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