TBILISI, Georgia — An angry crowd attacked allies of President Mikheil Saakashvili
outside the site for an annual address to the nation on Friday, as
Georgia’s five-month-old power-sharing experiment deteriorated into open
conflict.
A mob surged toward Gigi Ugulava,
the mayor of Tbilisi, as the police looked on, unable or unwilling to
control a crowd that had taken shape hours earlier and vowed to prevent
Mr. Saakashvili from entering. At least five lawmakers from the
president’s party were reported injured in the brawl.
Mr. Saakashvili’s party, which had dominated Georgian politics for nine
years, lost a parliamentary election last year to an opposition
coalition, Georgian Dream. It was the first constitutional transfer of
power in this country with a long history of civil unrest, and Western
leaders hailed it as a breakthrough for the post-Soviet region.
But that moment quickly soured. Since Mr. Saakashvili’s presidential
term does not end until October, he must serve alongside Bidzina
Ivanishvili, the prime minister, who loathes and distrusts him. The new
government has cut Mr. Saakashvili down to size, stripping him of his
private plane and reducing his household budget, but the president
retains the right to dissolve the government and call for new
parliamentary elections, levers his opponents fear he will use.
Friday’s confrontation
began when lawmakers from Mr. Ivanishvili’s coalition canceled Mr.
Saakashvili’s address to the nation, which is traditionally delivered in
the Parliament chamber.
Mr. Saakashvili, defiant, said he would deliver the speech at the
national library in Tbilisi. By midday Friday, several hundred
protesters — many of them prisoners newly freed by an amnesty that the
president had opposed — had gathered outside the building, seething with
anger.
One of them, Giorgi Gorelashvili, 57, said he had served two years after he was convicted of spying for Russia.
“He has no right to make speeches, and we will not allow him in,” he said. “Saakashvili is not the president anymore.”
When Mr. Saakashvili’s central allies arrived, 10 minutes before the
speech was to begin, protesters began pelting them with eggs. The
library’s front door had been decorated with brooms, in a grim reference
to a prison abuse scandal last fall, which featured video of a man
being sodomized with a broom. Two men repeatedly punched Chiora
Taktakishvili, who served as a campaign spokeswoman for Mr.
Saakashvili’s party, leaving her dazed and with blood running from one
nostril.
The fracas
ended after about 10 minutes when Mr. Saakashvili’s allies left. Each
side has blamed the other for provoking violence. David Usupashvili, the
speaker of Parliament, described it to reporters outside as “another
spectacle and provocation of Saakashvili, which the protesters
unfortunately succumbed to,” the Interfax news agency reported.
Among those who had already entered the building when the brawl began
were diplomats who had come at Mr. Saakashvili’s invitation, like the
United States ambassador, Richard Norland.
“There are certain basic principles in democracy, and no matter how
strongly you feel about an issue or how much you feel you’ve been
wronged, there is no excuse for using violence, for punching
parliamentarians as they go in to hear a speech by the president,” Mr.
Norland told reporters outside. He warned of reports that crowds were
moving toward Mr. Saakashvili’s palace.
Mr. Saakashvili made no effort to get into the library. Instead, he
invited his loyalists and the assembled diplomats to hear his address
two hours later in the president’s palace.
At a fruit stand near the site of the brawl, people crowded around a
small television to watch coverage of the melee and discuss what had
happened and who was to blame.
“The only thing left for us, ordinary people, is to pray for peace to
return,” Aleksandr Makharashvili, 45, said. “I am afraid there is no way
they will be able to shake hands of each other after this.”
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