November 2 protest make or break for the opposition—and crucial for Georgia’s democracy

Tomorrow, the government faces its biggest public challenge since taking power.

The day after the dramatic arrest of ex-minister Irakli Okruashvili at the end of September, thousands of discontented and newly galvanized voters trod the steps of parliament to protest the Saakashvili administration.

Every healthy democracy expects protests, but this was perhaps the biggest, and certainly the most momentous, since the 2003 Rose Revolution. Now, the opposition hope to top it.

Foolishly, opposition leaders spoke of bringing 100 000 demonstrators to Rustaveli Avenue for the November 2 rally. They now talk privately of 50 000 supporters, which is still optimistic but not impossible. There was just a month to plan, but financial backing from the deep-pocketed Badri Patarkatsishvili will solve many logistical hurdles. The opposition will still need organizational finesse to pull off their event, and backup plans in case of ill-timed road closures.

Observers, meanwhile, should resist the temptation to make comparisons with the Rose Revolution. While a crowd in the tens of thousands would rival the numbers four years ago, no credible politicians are now calling for a revolution. The overthrow of Shevardnadze was hardly spontaneous: its Western-backed architects worked for years to put everything in place, including winning crucial support from police and military by attaining, in their words, moral superiority with a tenacious and well-organized preparatory campaign.

That is not happening now. While the opposition coalition includes a handful of Rose Revolution co-leaders, they are working, as their benefactor Patarkatsishvili urges, for evolution rather than revolution. The key demand is for parliamentary elections in April 2008, half a year earlier than the presidential election they’re currently scheduled to coincide with.

This is a country without a strongly established tradition of peaceful protest, and the day is bound to be an unpredictable one. People are fretting, speculating that the opposition will stage a violent provocation, or the government will, or South Ossetia or Abkhazia or Russia will.

But those Georgians who protested after Okruashvili’s arrest were exemplary in their self-control. In the unlikely event that anything tragic occurs, it will be the fault of a few.

For the opposition, the protest will be successful if they force earlier elections—the sole precondition for the dialogue they say can cancel the rally. Their joint manifesto, on the other hand, is often vague and largely overlapping with the government’s own platform. Their calls for restructuring the government as a parliamentary republic, and releasing ‘political prisoners,’ do not strongly resonate with most voters.

Earlier elections will be the most compelling rallying cry for protestors united only by a desire to boot out the ruling party.

Georgians gave this government an overwhelming electoral mandate in 2004. There has been real progress since then, but voters have lost confidence and patience. In the absence of reliable polling, tomorrow’s protest will give the government an unavoidably clear gauge of the political landscape.

If a strong turnout promises to deepen the current political uncertainty, earlier elections will be responsible and sensible. They would defuse any crisis and channel energies into peaceful, if rhetorically bellicose, campaigning. This government has many successes to boast of, and it can take the winter to prove them to voters.

If the turnout is underwhelming, however, the opposition will be forced to look at other ways to succeed in parliamentary elections held when the president wants them. The lowering of the vote threshold for parliamentary representation, coupled with the fair elections that NATO’s eyes will ensure, gives them a chance. A wild card is Patarkatsishvili, well respected and extremely wealthy, who is stepping further into national politics each day. He could draw together a viable opposition where now there is only a tenuous alliance of fractious movements.

Whatever it may lead to, it is crucial that tomorrow’s demonstration be a milestone in Georgia’s democratic development, not a detour.

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