For the past five weeks, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s United National Movement (ENM) has sought to induce the maximum number of political parties, in particular its main opposition rival, the Georgian Dream bloc headed due to the billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, to sign up to a four-point code of conduct, reports Radio Free Europe News agency.
It is reported that the code of conduct is aimed at ensuring that the October 1 parliamentary election campaign is peaceful, free, and fair, and that all parties participating agree in advance to accept the outcome as legitimate if it is assessed as such by international election observers.
Concluding such an agreement would be a public-relations victory for the ENM. But the chances now appear remote after the head of the OSCE/ODIHR International Election Observation Mission said that it is not the task of that mission to rule on the “legitimacy” of the election.
