Since President Mikheil Saakashvili came to power in late 2003, Georgia has made notable progress in increasing economic and political freedoms and reducing police corruption and crime, according to many observers. However, these observers—including international organizations such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the European Union (EU), and governments such as the United States—also have viewed this progress as uneven, and have judged Georgia's legislative and presidential elections in 2008 as promising but falling somewhat short as free and fair contests. These observers strongly impressed upon the Georgian government that the conduct of the October 1, 2012, election to the Parliament (also called the Supreme Council) would affect future relations and the country's hopes for eventually joining the European Union and NATO. The seminal event in the run-up to the October 2012 legislative race was multi-billionaire businessman Bidzina Ivanishvili's announcement in late 2011 that he would enter politics in opposition to Saakashvili (See Box). A few days after this announcement, Saakashvili signed an order revoking Ivanishvili's Georgian citizenship on the grounds that he also held Russian and French citizenship (Ivanishvili subsequently relinquished his Russian citizenship, but France deferred action on his request to relinquish his French citizenship). With his citizenship revoked, Ivanishvili was barred from running for office. Following domestic and international criticism, several constitutional changes were enacted by Saakashvili's United National Movement (UNM)-led Parliament and went into force in May 2012. One such change permitted a citizen of an EU country who has lived for five years in Georgia to be elected to high political office. This provision was designed to permit Ivanishvili's participation in the October 2012 legislative election. However, Ivanishvili proclaimed that he would not run in the election except as a citizen of Georgia. The UNM-controlled legislature passed other provisions in late 2011 barring corporate contributions and limiting corporate employee contributions to political parties. Critics viewed these provisions as attempts to hinder Ivanishvili from financing prospective or existing parties. Instead, state financing of campaigns by existing parties that had won past elections was stepped up, also viewed by critics as a means to constrict any new party created through Ivanishvili's interests. The State Audit Chamber was given responsibility to monitor campaign spending. Also in late 2011, a new electoral code provided for 77 members of the 150-seat legislature to be elected through proportional voting and the remaining 73 through constituency voting in single member districts, replacing the previous election of 50% of the members by each method. Another provision guaranteed that a party that gained a minimum of 5% of the vote would get at least six seats in the legislature. Ivanishvili launched his new political party, Georgia Dream-Democratic Georgia (GD), in April 2012, and formed a coalition with several parties headed by individuals who once supported or were a part of the Saakashvili government, and other groups and individuals left behind by political developments in the country. These include two parties that broke with Saakashvili in 2004: the Republican Party of Georgia, headed by Davit Usupashvili, and the Conservative Party, headed by Zviad Dzidziguri. Another party, the Free Democrats Party, headed by Irakli Alasania, broke with Saakashvili at the end of 2008. Two other parties moved into opposition during or soon after Saakashvili's rise to power: the National Forum Party, headed by Gubaz Sanikidze, and the Industry Will Save Georgia Party, headed by Gogi Topadze. Besides these party leaders who ran as candidates under the GD umbrella, other past and present politicians and celebrities joined the GD as candidates. Although these parties and individuals represented a broad range of views from xenophobic and socially conservative to pro-Western and reformist, in launching GD, Ivanishvili affirmed support for Georgia's integration into NATO and the EU; vowed to reduce poverty, unemployment, and emigration and to increase health, education and other social services; and generally pledged to bolster Georgia's democratic and free market orientation. In June-July 2012, the State Audit Chamber obtained court rulings levying substantial fines on GD and its campaign donors, and authorities seized tens of thousands of satellite dishes belonging to two Ivanishvili-related television stations, alleging that the provision of dishes to customers represented illicit vote-buying. Domestic and international criticism of these moves may have contributed to the reduction or deferral of some of the fines and the enactment of a "must carry" law that allowed programs from Ivanishvili-related stations to be carried by cable providers until election day. By early September 2012, the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) of Georgia had registered 14 parties and two electoral blocs (GD and the Christian Democratic Union)—comprising 2,313 candidates—for the proportional part of the legislative election. In the constituency races, the CEC had registered 429 candidates, including four nominated by independent initiative groups. There were no uncontested constituency races. The most significant events occurring late in the campaign were the release of videos by GD purporting to show shocking prison abuse by guards, and allegations by UNM that GD was consorting with organized crime. The airing of the videos on September 18 led to large protests throughout Georgia. On September 20, Saakashvili emphasized that the videos showed "disgusting" human rights abuses that were "failures of the system," but he urged that voters "should not throw the baby out with the bathwater," by punishing UNM at the polls. In his address to the U.N. General Assembly on September 25, he emphasized that "we did what democracies must do," by replacing the Minister of Prisons with a human rights official, ousting the Minister of the Interior, and arresting other prison officials. The release of the videos late in the campaign undermined Saakashvili's image as a anti-corruption fighter and champion of democracy in the eyes of many voters, according to many observers. Opinion polls taken by the U.S. National Democratic Institute in June and August 2012—before the release of the videos—seemed to indicate that more Georgians preferred UNM to GD and that support for GD may have weakened (perhaps a caveat to these findings, a large percentage of individuals declined to indicate who they would vote for). After the videos were released, the views of the electorate may have shifted. Perhaps indicative of this shift late in the campaign, over 100,000 individuals reportedly turned out at a final campaign rally held by Ivanishvili in Tbilisi on September 29, among the largest turnout at a rally in recent years. The CEC reported that almost 2.16 million of 3.6 million registered voters turned out for the election (about 59.8%) on October 1. Only UNM and GD won enough party list votes to pass the 5% hurdle and win seats in the legislature (see Table 1 ). Citing irregularities in the voting in several precincts, the CEC ordered repeat elections to be held on October 14 in three constituency races, which resulted in reversals in two with wins by GD candidates and the re-confirmation of a tentative win by a GD candidate in the third. Looking at the results for both the party list and constituency races, UNM lost 54 of the 119 seats it held after the 2008 election. The polarization between the two major political forces—GD and UNM—appeared to attract the attention of the bulk of the electorate, so that all the other parties were sidelined, including the Christian Democratic Union and the Labor Party, which had won legislative seats in 2008 but failed to win any during this election. On October 2, after 29% of the votes had been counted and GD appeared to have a wide lead over UNM, President Saakashvili made a concession speech, repeating past statements that he thought GD's views were "extremely mistaken," but that he respected the decision of the people. He voiced the hope that the UNM could work with GD to govern, but stressed that UNM would oppose any rollback of the party's achievements, including "fighting against corruption, fighting against crime, modernizing Georgia, and building new institutions." On October 3-4, the CEC reported that groups of GD supporters were threatening the work of electoral officials at nearly a dozen district headquarters, demanding that the election officials reverse "fraudulent" vote counts resulting in wins for UNM candidates in constituency races. The European Union's mission chief in Georgia, Philip Dimitrov, warned that such threats against election officials reflected badly on party leaders. On October 4, U.S. Ambassador to Georgia Richard Norland traveled to Zugdidi to urge GD supporters protesting against a local electoral win by a UNM candidate to respect democratic processes. That same day, Ivanishvili issued an appeal for these protests to stop. Georgian National Security Council Secretary Giga Bokeria warned that "violence and the threat of violence" at electoral commissions was the main impediment to the orderly transfer of power, and urged the protesters to heed Ivanishvili's appeal. The head of the OSCE election observation mission stated on October 2 that "the Georgian people have freely expressed their will at the ballot box ... despite a very polarizing campaign." The nearly 400 observers reported that the legislative elections "marked an important step in consolidating the conduct of democratic elections," although some problems remained. The observers reported that voting appeared to be administered in a competent manner in almost all of 1,260 polling stations visited. However, they evaluated vote counting somewhat less positively, reporting that in nearly two dozen of 135 counts observed, there were procedural errors in completing voting protocols.