Gooooood Luck, Georgia!

Tomorrow (today, as it is already in Georgia, 5 January) the presidential elections will take place, called at short notice, after a week of uproar and a week of a state of emergency, in November last year.

Here it says that Saakashvili, the former president, ex-democrat turned...autocrat...?, had 50% more airtime for his campaign adverts than his nearest rival, Levan Gachechiladze. I think Europe has Rules About This Sort Of Thing, but I don't what these depend on - I can't imagine that the Scottish National Party would get the same amount of airtime for the Westminster Parliament as, say, New Labour. But the hierarchy of airtime must depend on something transparent - or is it just the ability to pay for airtime? Mr Patarkatsishvili, the billionaire candidate with the stories of potential assassinations, got about a sixth of the paid airtime of the president (and he could have bought much more), but probably quite a lot of unpaid airtime due to notoriety.

I've blogged extensively (mostly) here about events preceding the election, but now I am not in Georgia. Observers from many countries are, however, as well as my friend Helene. Lithuania has sent over 100, including MPs and young activists, and even Tajikistan has sent young observers - given the patterns of Tajik presidential elections I'm not totally convinced who is supposed to benefit from that....

Let's pray that these elections go smoothly and calmly, and that the events currently going on in Kenya and Pakistan do not repeat themselves in Georgia. Let's pray further that the President the country gets will work hard to ensure that the whole population shares in the increasing prosperity in the country.