[Tee tiong huat]

Georgia's disputed election results raise red flag & Russia will win tug of war against EU. In the small South Caucasus nation of Georgia, a titanic battle over its future is taking place. Georgians went to polls on Saturday in most important election since country's independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. A gaggle of opposition coalitions set out to jointly bring an end to 12 years of rule by Georgian Dream (GD), a once pro-Western party that has shifted heavily over the past two years toward favouring ties with Russia over those with the Euro Union & the US.

It has been a startling reversal of course for the country, where polls regularly show that upwards of 80 per cent of Georgians support joining the EU. While this remains the publicly stated goal of GD, relations have degraded so badly over the party's increasing authoritarianism that Brussels officially froze Georgia's EU candidacy in June, just months after granting it.

The immediate impetus for the move was the implementation of a much-criticized Russian-style law on "foreign agents," passed by Georgia's parliament in May despite massive street protests against it. (The law enables government agencies to effectively dismantle any civil society organization at a whim.)