Georgia: "Thieves of Votes" action of the opposition

The United Opposition of Georgia has held a two-hour action under the motto "Thieves of Votes" in the centre of Tbilisi, in Rustaveli Avenue, and accused President Mikhail Saakashvili and Levan Tarkhnishvili, Chairman of the Central Electoral Commission of Georgia, of falsification of the January 5 election.

The participants of the action, with posters in hands and white scarves on their necks (a symbol of peaceful oppositional movement) marched to the Parliament of Georgia along the Rustaveli Avenue. On their way they stuck posters with portraits of Saakashvili and Tarkhnishvili to house facades and even to the buses when they stopped at bus stops.

Kakha Tsilosani, a citizen and rank-and-file member of the "People's Party", which belongs to the United National Board of the United Opposition, said:

"This election was a sneer at all of us. I saw with my own eyes a shuttle minivan near my polling station full of people who participated in the election 'roundabout'. But what could I do alone? The election was held under total falsification. We had once voted for Saakashvili in expectation of better life, but everything has turned out in the opposite way. Georgia is sold out, return of Abkhazia is excluded and accession to the EU is under question too."

Kakha Kukava, one of the leaders of the Conservative Party of Georgia, has noted that the actions of the opposition pursue two aims. "Firstly, a political one: to show that Saakashvili will never become a full-fledged president. We shall remind him that he is illegitimate and non-recognized by all political parties in Georgia.

Secondly, we want to create a precedent that thieves of votes should be punished in the same way in Georgia as usual thieves - for example like car hijackers. Mr Tarkhnishvili is an ordinary criminal, and his place not in the Office of the Central Electoral Commission, but in one of the prisons," Mr Kukava told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.