EUobserver: ‘Georgia elections to test pro-Europe credentials”

An island of comparative stability in a particularly volatile and unpredictable region, NATO and the EU should not let Georgia down,” write policy experts Amanda Paul and Dennis Sammut in a thought provoking piece for the euobserver.

Tomorrow the people of Georgia will go to polling booths and vote for who they want to run the country. Paul and Sammut say these elections will give an "important check-up on the health of Georgian democracy, and a snapshot of Georgian public opinion on a number of important issues, including foreign policy”.

For the past 13 years, since the Rose Revolution, Georgia’s leaders have made Euro-Atlantic integration a priority, believing it to be the only way to guarantee the country’s security and statehood. This western aspiration has been strongly backed by society, making it easier to move ahead with important reforms, they write.

But while Georgia has made significant progression and strengthened ties with NATO and the EU, it seems Georgia’s allies and partners have not fulfilled their commitments to the developing post-Soviet state. 

The country has made significant steps to strengthen democracy and good governance, and this will be evident again tomorrow when the people of Georgia go to voting booths to choose the country’s ninth Parliament.

There are some reasons for optimism. One is the robustness of the electoral process and the professionalism of the Central Elections Commission (CEC). Ahead of these parliamentary elections the CEC has been credited with producing the most accurate voters list ever – a bone of contention in previous Georgian elections. It has, so far, worked transparently and garnered the trust of the electorate. This factor should not be underestimated,” says Paul and Sammut.

"Grievances with the election process in 2003 were so strongly felt as to trigger the ‘Rose Revolution’. The conditions do not exist for a repeat of this in 2016, even if the Government says that Saakashvili is actively planning for this from his haven in Odessa.”

Read the full article here: www.euobserver.com