Easter Political Timeout Approaching

The Easter and ensuing timeout from active political protests is essential for the politicians as well as society to reevaluate their action plan for the coming weeks. Assuming that European Commission could serve as an intermediary between the ruling and opposition parties to launch successful talks, the political actors need to draft a reasonable dialogue agenda.

Frankly speaking, government-opposition dialogue would not imply resumed trust among the political actors; however, level-headed situation analysis could lead to the realistic conclusions. On the one hand, the ruling party is willing to make certain concessions after listening to the protesters; on the other hand, the opposition rally organizers should compromise in order to contribute to negotiations process and to deliver some tangible results to their supporters in the streets before the protest wave subsides. Let's play with the idea of early parliamentary elections.

The street protests entered into eighth consecutive day and no major breakthrough yet emerged. On the political level, the scale of rallies apparently failed to force the authorities to go beyond their pre -April 9 promises; The ruling party calls for the start of dialogue on constitutional and electoral reform to lay ground for a long-tem political stability and peaceful power transition in 2013 when President Saakashvili's second term in office expires; direct election of Tbilisi mayor next spring. Senior ruling party official indicated recently that possibility of a coalition government could be part of "a normal political dialogue". The authorities continue tactic of staying away from the protests with uniformed police having no presence on the protest venues and low presence around those venues. However, the number of reports of separate cases of attacks on opposition activists and supporters in recent days increased.

The opposition, organizing the protest rallies and consisting of over dozen of parties, tries to give more momentum to the protest saying that it would launch campaigning in the region after orthodox Easter to bring supporters in the capital city, describing their move as a 3rd stage of the opposition protest.

MP Giorgi Targamadze, leader of Christian-Democratic Movement (CDM) and of parliamentary minority, warned the opposition parties behind ongoing protest rallies, that their tactic could lead to their marginalization.