This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/03/world/europe/georgia-election-results.html

The article has changed 5 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 2 Version 3
Georgia’s President Concedes Defeat in Parliamentary Election Georgia’s President Concedes Defeat in Parliamentary Election
(about 11 hours later)
TBILISI, Georgia — Georgia’s larger-than-life president, Mikheil Saakashvili, conceded defeat on Tuesday after early results in Georgia’s hotly contested parliamentary race showed that a coalition backed by the billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili had edged out his party. TBILISI, Georgia — President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia conceded defeat in parliamentary elections on Tuesday and declared himself an opposition politician, an extraordinary event in a country whose other post-Soviet leaders have left office under pressure from chanting crowds and the threat of civil war.
“After summarizing the preliminary results of parliamentary elections, it is obvious that the coalition Georgian Dream has gained an advantage in these elections,” Mr. Saakashvili said in a statement. “It means that the parliamentary majority should form a new government and I, as the president, will contribute — in frames of the Constitution — to the process of launching Parliament’s work so that it is able to elect its chairman and also to form a new government.” Mr. Saakashvili, 44, saw his presidency as a mission to wrench Georgia free of its Soviet past, which made it especially striking to see him let it go so calmly, a bronze bust of Ronald Reagan visible behind his right shoulder.
Georgia’s Central Election Commission said that with about 25 percent of the vote counted, Mr. Ivanishvili’s coalition, Georgian Dream, had 53 percent and the governing United National Movement had 42. The result is a sobering verdict on Mr. Saakashvili and his ruling team, who took power in the peaceful Rose Revolution nine years ago. A coalition of opposition groups, called Georgian Dream, won the vote on Monday by 55.1 percent to 40.1 percent, the Central Election Commission reported on Wednesday morning, with about 96 percent of precincts reporting.
In his years in office, Mr. Saakashvili has restyled Georgia as a bastion of resistance to Russian influence and a laboratory for free-market economic policy. “You know well that the views of this coalition were, and still are, fundamentally unacceptable for me,” Mr. Saakashvili said. “There are very deep differences between us, and we believe that their views are extremely wrong. But democracy works in this way — the Georgian people make decisions by majority. That’s what we, of course, respect very much.”
He faced no formidable challenges until the emergence last year of Mr. Ivanishvili, a reclusive philanthropist who has spent years spreading his Russian-earned billions around Georgia’s countryside. Mr. Ivanishvili has tapped into long-simmering grievances over poverty and the heavy-handed ruling style of Mr. Saakashvili and his team. Tbilisi, the capital, had become increasingly tense as the elections approached, and many feared that they would end in a confrontation between government forces and the throngs of voters who had coalesced around Mr. Saakashvili’s challenger, the billionaire philanthropist Bidzina Ivanishvili. Both of Mr. Saakashvili’s predecessors, Zviad K. Gamsakhurdia and Eduard A. Shevardnadze, left office in chaotic circumstances, hoping to avoid civil unrest.
It was a remarkable upset. After the exit polls were released, cars flying Georgian Dream flags screamed down the central artery here, and thousands gathered in Freedom Square. Temur Butikashvili, 52, a filmmaker, said it was the first time Georgia had changed its leadership through an election. Mr. Saakashvili’s concession opens the door to another unknown. He will remain president until next year, so he will have to serve alongside Mr. Ivanishvili, who will most likely be prime minister.
“We have done what all our ancestors aspired to. We have calmly, quietly transferred power,” Mr. Butikashvili said. An hour after Mr. Saakashvili’s concession, though, Mr. Ivanishvili excoriated him at length, calling him “the main cause of all the bad things in Georgia,” and said the two men could not collaborate.
Of Mr. Saakashvili, he said: “We had great hopes when he came in. He studied in America; we thought he had an American mentality. But he turned from a democrat into an autocrat. He turned into an authoritarian.” Mr. Ivanishvili then said Mr. Saakashvili should resign and schedule new presidential elections. “This will be the end of his problems,” he said at a news conference. “This would be a good way for him to keep his image. This would be good for Georgia.”
With Monday’s election, many felt the country was headed for a reckoning. Georgia has a history of chaotic power struggles — the first and second post-Soviet presidents left office before the end of their terms to avoid deepening civil unrest — and Mr. Ivanishvili’s supporters have warned that they will take to the streets rather than accept vote counts that they consider fraudulent. Mr. Saakashvili’s national security adviser, Giga Bokeria, went on television to make it clear that there would be no new presidential elections.
Both sides had grounds to declare victory, but big questions loom. Venomous attacks have marked the campaign, and it is hard to imagine the two leaders collaborating for the year that remains of Mr. Saakashvili’s presidency. “If someone is interested in provoking a crisis, this is a very dangerous choice,” he said. “It is not about personalities. It is about Georgian democracy and the will of the people.”
At a news conference, Mr. Ivanishvili said there would be no prosecution of government officials unless they had violated law and that the police and prosecutors would keep their jobs. Dozens of United States and European officials had streamed into Tbilisi to serve as consultants or observers, and on the eve of the vote it was difficult to traverse a hotel lobby without passing an American congressman. Under Mr. Saakashvili, Georgia has been the United States’ staunchest ally in the post-Soviet orbit, and its capital features a statue of Reagan and a street named after former President George W. Bush. Western officials have frequently warned Mr. Saakashvili about his excesses, including when the police used rubber bullets and water cannons to disperse demonstrators in 2007.
Referring to Mr. Saakashvili, he said: “This is a man who cannot accept a different opinion.” He added, “This man was working without any opposing ideas. But nowadays things have changed.”One of the major differences between Mr. Ivanishvili and Mr. Saakashvili is on Russia; Mr. Ivanishvili has criticized the president for his open hostility toward Russia and suggested that he would take a more conciliatory line and Russian markets would reopen to Georgian produce, wine and mineral water, providing an economic lift. Meanwhile, Mr. Saakashvili has accused his opponent of being a front for the Kremlin. As the election approached, American officials and other interlocutors shuttled between Mr. Ivanishivili and Mr. Saakashvili, hoping to defuse tensions in the event of a disputed vote. Representative David Dreier, Republican of California, said he quoted Winston Churchill’s directive “In victory, magnanimity.”
Mr. Ivanishvili at the news conference said that Georgia was still headed toward NATO membership, but that he hoped to improve relationships with Russia. “Nothing will disturb our strategy — our strategic direction is NATO,” he said. He added that there would be no contact with the Kremlin. “Georgia cannot be a big geopolitical player, as Saakashvili said. We should be a regional player.” “This is clearly the most competitive election in the history of the country,” said Mr. Dreier, who led a delegation from the International Republican Institute, an American democracy-building organization. “Let’s hope that brings about a different outcome than the ones we’ve seen in the past — where, basically, you grind your heel into the opposition.”
There was palpable tension on Monday in the village of Karaleti, where identical concrete houses hold hundreds of families displaced from their land by the 2008 war with Russia. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a New Hampshire Democrat who met with Mr. Saakashvili on Tuesday morning, said he showed “his statesmanship, and his commitment to the democratic process, and to continuing the values that he has put in place.”
When activists from Mr. Ivanishvili’s party visited over the summer, they were hounded out of town by residents shouting and waving sticks. Dato Chulkhadze, 38, lounged with a group of brawny men in T-shirts opposite Karaleti’s polling station on Monday, recalling the episode with satisfaction. “Clearly, it was hard,” she said. “It’s never easy to lose.”
“People started to shout, ‘You are Russian, you are Russian,’ and they had no answer — even a small child knows they are on Russia’s side,” Mr. Chulkhadze said. Asked about Mr. Ivanishvili’s changes, he said, “I pray to God nothing like this will happen. If it happens, the Russians will return.” Mr. Saakashvili made it clear in his brief remarks that his mind was on his legacy. He was just 36 when he was swept into office by the Rose Revolution, and his agenda was eventful: disbanding the hated traffic police; instituting a zero-tolerance policy that swelled the prison population fourfold; introducing English, not Russian, as the country’s second language; replacing Soviet concrete-slab construction with jaw-dropping glass buildings; and establishing Georgia as a laboratory for free-market economic policy.
But several residents approached a reporter quietly to say that support for Mr. Ivanishvili was higher than it appeared, except people were afraid to say so publicly. One woman, who would not give her name, said she was voting for Mr. Ivanishvili because “we should not be afraid when we talk.” Many of his pet projects came in for criticism during the campaign, which tapped into frustration over persistent poverty and unemployment, as well as weariness with a clique that had monopolized politics for eight years. In his remarks, Mr. Saakashvili dwelled on the changes that had taken place in society over eight years.
“The achievements of the Rose Revolution in the last eight years are very important not only for Georgian history — it is one of the most important periods of Georgia’s multicentury history — but they have turned Georgia into one of the key countries for the rest of the world,” he said. “Therefore, I am deeply confident that ultimately, regardless of what threats these achievements may face within the nearest months or years, their eradication is impossible.”
His decision to step aside clearly resonated deeply with some Georgians.
“We have no tradition of democracy with no shooting,” said Mikheil Sologashvili, 51. “What we’ve had here is, ‘You kicked me out, and I ran away.’ I am so happy that I woke up after the election, and that on the second day, I heard the president say that even though he disagrees, this is the demand of democracy. For me, that is better than if someone gave me the latest model of Mercedes.”
He said it would be a great mistake for Mr. Saakashvili to leave office before his term ends next year. “A big ship leaves big waves behind it,” he said. “He should not leave quickly. He should calm the waters.”
Much attention swung immediately to Mr. Ivanishvili, who is still a mysterious figure to many in the West. A central question is how close Mr. Ivanishvili will bring Georgia to Russia, the country where he earned his billions. Mr. Ivanishvili has promised to use diplomacy to “normalize” the country’s relationship with Russia, which in 2006 closed its markets to imports of wine, fruit and bottled water, stripping many people of their livelihood.
At his news conference on Tuesday, Mr. Ivanishvili said without hesitating that he planned to bring Georgia even closer to the United States and that he, like Mr. Saakashvili, hoped to steer the country toward NATO membership.
Mr. Ivanishvili said he would not open prosecutions against officials in Mr. Saakashvili’s government unless they had violated laws.
However, he went on to inveigh against Mr. Saakashvili, deriding his trademark reforms, as well as recent projects like a plan to build a city, Lazika, on the Black Sea, and a joint construction venture with Donald J. Trump.
Ms. Shaheen, the New Hampshire senator, said she had heard little specific from Mr. Ivanishvili about how he intended to collaborate with Mr. Saakashvili. “I would hope that in winning,” she said, “he will be as supportive of democracy and as thoughtful and as conciliatory as the president has been.”

Olesya Vartanyan contributed reporting.

Olesya Vartanyan contributed reporting.