Legislative elections were held in the Georgia on March 28, 2004. The elections followed the annulment of the November 2003 legislative elections, which were widely believed to have been rigged by the former President, Eduard Shevardnadze. New elections were ordered following the resignation of Shevardnadze and the election of President Mikhail Saakashvili in January 2004.
Georgia is a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the south by Turkey and Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital and largest city is Tbilisi. Georgia covers a territory of 69,700 square kilometres (26,911 sq mi), and its 2017 population is about 3.718 million. Georgia is a unitary semi-presidential republic, with the government elected through a representative democracy.
Eduard Ambrosiyevich Shevardnadze was a Georgian politician and diplomat. He served as First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party (GPC), the de facto leader of Soviet Georgia from 1972 to 1985 and as Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991. Shevardnadze was responsible for many key decisions in Soviet foreign policy during the Gorbachev Era including reunification of Germany. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, he was President of Georgia from 1992 to 2003. He was forced to retire in 2003 as a consequence of the bloodless Rose Revolution.
As a result, the NMD won most of the 130 seats elected by proportional representation in the Georgian Parliament. Of the 20 parties contesting the elections, only the NMD and the Right Opposition bloc polled more than 7% of the vote, the threshold necessary to gain representation.
Proportional representation (PR) characterizes electoral systems in which divisions in an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body. If n% of the electorate support a particular political party, then roughly n% of seats will be won by that party. The essence of such systems is that all votes contribute to the result - not just a plurality, or a bare majority. The most prevalent forms of proportional representation all require the use of multiple-member voting districts, as it is not possible to fill a single seat in a proportional manner. In fact, the implementations of PR that achieve the highest levels of proportionality tend to include districts with large numbers of seats.
The Right Opposition is an alliance of Georgia's New Rights (Conservatives) and Industry will save Georgia parties. It is the only opposition group that received over seven percent of the votes on March 28, 2004, which was the necessary threshold to secure seats in Parliament. During the November 2003 Rose Revolution, they refused to join the opposition rallies, guaranteeing thereby the quorum to be met at the opening session of the Parliament largely believed to have been elected as a result of gross rigging.
The new Georgian Parliament will also include 85 members elected from single-member constituencies, who were elected in the November 2003 elections and have not been required to face re-election. The exact party loyalty of these members is not known, but Georgian websites suggest that about 23 of them are NMD members or supporters, about 15 are opposition supporters, and the rest are independents.
The National Movement - Democrats party unites President Saakashvili's National Movement, Prime-Minister Zurab Zhvania's United Democrats, the Republican Party, supporters of Parliamentary Chairperson Nino Burjanadze and some of the supporters of the late President Zviad Gamsakhurdia, the Union of National Forces.
Zurab Zhvania was a Georgian politician, who served as Prime Minister of Georgia and Speaker of the Parliament of Georgia. Zhvania began his political career at young age, making his first political steps as a member of Green Party, in the beginning of 90s. In 1992 Zhvania was elected chairman of Eastern European Green's and was first Eastern European to serve at the post. In 1993 Zhvania made first serious steps in Georgian politics as he was elected as General Secretary of Citizen's Union. From that point Zhvania served important role in Georgian politics until his death in 2005. 1995 he became the chairman of parliament and maintained the post till his resignation in 1999, which was followed with discharge of other ministers, whom Zhvania suspected in Corruption. From 1993 till 2003 Zhvania remained in opposition fighting against Shevardandze's government. In 2003, Zhvania united with other opposition leaders, mainly Burdjanadze and Saakashvili, held non-violent protests against the government. Protests ended with resignation of Shevardnadze and election of Saakashvili as the president. Zhvania became prime minister and served the post until his death in 2005.
Nino Burjanadze is a Georgian politician and lawyer who served as Chairperson of the Parliament of Georgia from November 2001 to June 2008. As the first woman she has served as the acting head of state of Georgia twice; the first time from 23 November 2003 to 25 January 2004 in the wake of Eduard Shevardnadze's resignation during the Rose Revolution, and again from 25 November 2007 to 20 January 2008, when Mikheil Saakashvili stepped down to rerun in the early presidential elections. She withdrew into opposition to Saakashvili as the leader of the Democratic Movement-United Georgia party in 2008. In October 2013, she ran for president in the October 2013 election. She ran against 22 candidates and ended third with 10 percent of the vote.
Zviad Gamsakhurdia was a Georgian politician, dissident, scholar, and writer who became the first democratically elected President of Georgia in the post-Soviet era. Gamsakhurdia is the only Georgian President to have died while formally in office.
David Gamkrelidze or Davit Gamqrelidze, is a Georgian politician, leader of the New Rights Party of Georgia, Member of Parliament since 1999, member of committee for defense and security, Chairman of the Centre-Right Opposition Group in the Parliament of Georgia. He also contested the 2008 Georgian presidential election and came fourth with the 4.02% of the votes cast.
At a press conference, Saakashvili said: "I think the people have given their verdict. I am not pleased that there is not more opposition representation, because that would have helped my party too to consolidate. But that is the reality, the post-revolutionary reality."
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is the world's largest security-oriented intergovernmental organization. Its mandate includes issues such as arms control, promotion of human rights, freedom of the press, and fair elections. It employs around 3,460 people, mostly in its field operations but also in its secretariat in Vienna, Austria and its institutions. It has its origins in the 1975 Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) held in Helsinki, Finland.
"The 28 March 2004 repeat parliamentary election in Georgia demonstrated commendable progress in relation to previous elections. The Georgian authorities have seized the opportunity, since the 4 January presidential election, to further bring Georgia's election process in closer alignment with European standards for democratic elections, including OSCE commitments and Council of Europe standards," the report said.
"However, in the wake of the events of November 2003, the political life of Georgia, as reflected in the election process, is not yet fully normalized. The consolidation of the democratic election process will only be fully tested in a more competitive environment, once a genuine level of political pluralism is re-established."
In an attempt to produce an election result acceptable to both domestic and international opinion, the Georgian government allowed the votes to be counted simultaneously by the CEC and by a non-government organisation, the International Society for Fair Elections and Society (ISFED). This was called the parallel vote tabulation (PVT). Figures released by ISFED on March 31 showed results almost identical to those released by the CEC.
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