The Eurasia Daily Monitor has a good account of what is at stake in tomorrow’s parliamentary election in Georgia.

An early presidential election was held in January at which President Saakashvili was re-elected. At the same time a referendum was held to determine whether early parliamentary elections should be held. This was approved. These elections will be held tomorrow.

There was an attempted coup in Georgia in autumn last year. In addition, Russia has started to escalate its support for the separatists in the Abkhazia region. Bearing in mind that President Saakashvili came to power in the Rose Revolution of late 2003, the president felt that he needed to reassert his authority.

The Eurasia Daily Monitor reports that President Saakashvili’s United National Movement will undoubtedly be the largest party and is likely to win a majority in the legislature. However, the report indicates that the president’s support is concentrated outside the capital Tbilisi and that opposition parties may gain a majority of the vote there.

The existence of a number of difficult political and foreign policy issues and the presence of a number of groups whose interests have been harmed by the change of regime in 2003/2004 means that President Saakashvili is still likely to have a difficult time governing, even if he does win the election and decisively so.

Georgia became semi-presidential after the Rose Revolution with the passage of constitutional amendments in early 2004. The country has been rated as Partly Free by Freedom House since 1992, though its score slipped from 3 to 4 in 2007. Georgia has also been classed as a partial democracy by Polity since 1992 with a score of 7 from 2004 including the latest score in 2006.