January 06, 2008	Sunday	Zilhaj 26, 1428

TBILISI: Georgia’s opposition complained of “serious violations” in a snap presidential poll on Saturday, but election officials and representatives of incumbent Mikheil Saakashvili dismissed the accusation. “We have the problems we expected. We have seen many serious violations,” one of the opposition’s leaders, Tina Khidasheli said.

She said the opposition had filmed numerous instances of people voting two or three times and said some ballot boxes had been tampered with by election officials.

She said that election officials were refusing to register the complaints of opposition representatives at polling stations.

“The authorities are trying to remove any legal basis for contesting the election,” Khidasheli said.

The opposition’s six representatives on Georgia’s 13-member Central Election Commission (CEC) also complained of problems.

“There were numerous violations and requests to investigate these facts have been submitted to the Central Election Commission,” Nino Goguadze, a commission member with the opposition Conservative Party, said at a press conference.

But the CEC spokesman denied there was trouble.

“The elections are proceeding in a calm atmosphere without any serious violations,” Irakli Porchkhidze said in televised comments.

Saakashvili’s spokesman, David Bakradze, accused the opposition of inventing violations in order to justify protests after the vote if they lose. “The opposition is saying there are mass violations but the absolute majority of these claims have been checked and not confirmed,” he said. “The political forces that are trying to discredit the election are in fact discrediting Georgia.” An independent Georgian election monitoring group, New Generation/New Initiative, also reported no major problems.

“All violations that took place so far are of a technical nature and in general the electoral process is proceeding in normal and stable conditions,”the group’s head, Koki Ionatamishvili, said at a press conference.—AFP