The Washington Post | Link to story »
Something extraordinary is happening here Monday, in a region where autocracy is the norm: a genuinely competitive national election. What remains to be seen is whether it will propel Georgia toward the Western-style liberal democracy the United States has been trying to promote here for the past eight years — or plunge it into violent political turmoil...
In a meeting Sunday at his palatial, glass-walled mansion overlooking Tbilisi with a group of journalists I joined, brought here by the German Marshall Fund, Ivanishvili insisted he had no intention of provoking such unrest. If a government election victory was endorsed by international monitors such as the U.S. National Democratic Institute, he said, he would accept the result and his party would take its seats in parliament. “We have no problem taking the role of opposition,” he said.
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