On November 12, the nine-party opposition coalition announced a two-person ticket for the January 5 presidential election: independent MP Levan Gachechiladze for president and Salome Zourabichvili for prime minister.

Gachechiladze, however, would be a placeholder if he won. The new government would try to change the country into a parliamentary republic, they promise, doing away with a strong presidency altogether.

That could put Zourabichvili, leader of Georgia’s Way and a former foreign minister, in charge.

Zourabichvili previously filed to run for president—but the French-born career diplomat was ruled ineligible due to residency requirements.

She is now a leading representative of the opposition coalition, formed in the end of September as an ad hoc organizing committee after the controversial arrest of ex-minister Irakli Okruashvili and an outpouring of protest the next day.

The coalition then organized the November 2 rally, which drew tens of thousands of anti-government demonstrators to central Tbilisi. The rally continued day and night until riot police violently dispersed the crowd, plunging the capital into a severe crisis as authorities declared a state of emergency and stormed the offices of leading broadcaster Imedi TV.

The Messenger spoke with Zourabichvili in the lobby of the Tbilisi Marriott, where she painted a picture of a beleaguered and disorganized opposition, struggling to find its footing just seven weeks before a crucial election.

Questions and responses have been edited for length and clarity.

TM: On Tuesday, US envoy Matthew Bryza said he has seen substantive dialogue between the opposition and the government. Do you agree with that assessment?

SZ: No.

There is no substantive dialogue, there is dialogue for dialogue. And there is no dialogue on the main issue, which I think Matthew Bryza should know about… Political repression is continuing. People are being called by special services, they’re being fined for having just been in the demonstration.

They’re intimidated every day and media freedom is not restored.

…Anybody you meet from the population can you give the names of two or three relatives to whom this is happening every day, and it is worse in the provinces.

We have a climate of fear and repression that is continuing, and…[the authorities] are saying they’re going to continue because they think there was a conspiracy. So they’re not changing their main theme.

And you reject the suggestion there was a Russian-supported conspiracy to overthrow the government last week?

I reject it entirely. I think that there is another Russian trail, but that’s something completely different.

So, the conditions for elections are not there, and the dialogue that is happening and has been happening is not directed to the main issue, which is whether we can create the political conditions, the media freedom conditions, for having elections.

Have you begun any sort of campaigning?

How do you want to prepare a campaign in a state of emergency, where we don’t have the right to meet? My political party office is closed, because I don’t want anybody to be under any type of pressure because of political activities.

Political activists all around the country are under pressure…the young activists that were very active during the November days are all hiding somewhere, there are none to be seen.

The only thing we’ve been promised is that the leaders of the unified coalition would not be put into jail during the electoral campaign, but there is nothing said about the fact that they won’t be interrogated every day, or that they won’t be put into jail right after the elections.

So if that’s the climate for democratic elections, then I don’t know what we’re talking about.

Have you personally come under pressure?

I’ve come under personal pressure in the way that I was supposed to leave the country last Friday, and there were SOD people, that’s secret service, waiting at the airport checking my name. Well, I didn’t go that day, because I didn’t intend to go.

…And otherwise, there are cars parked, we’re all under phone tapping, and all kinds of tapping.

And you never know, my personal assistant…also in the youth movement, she’s being called at night. Phone calls.

All those things that we’re witnessing are things that cannot be proven. And that’s the type of dialogue that we’re having with the authorities. They’re telling us, “Well, bring us some proof of that, otherwise it’s just your word.”

Well, yes, fear is just our word.

Conservative MP Kakha Kukava, a coalition member, said on Sunday that your coalition would not announce a presidential candidate until freedom of the media was restored. On Monday, you announced your pick. What changed?

That was not a common decision [to withhold the announcement]. Everybody has a right to express views at a certain point, but we never expressed that as a collective position.

So these days, you should be very careful to distinguish between comments… [The opposition coalition] is not tightly-knit, it’s not an organized political body.

And yes, [announcing Gachechiladze’s candidacy for president] was a question that was very much talked about. Myself, I’m not sure that we should have done it before [emergency rule was lifted].

In any way, and any circumstances, we want to go to dialogue. We want to make sure that we’re seen as a unified opposition that will go to elections, that we’re in no way reluctant to go to elections.

…But at the same time, if there is no media, what can we do? In a country where everything is restricted, where we won’t have access to public buildings to hold meetings, where they have already said they’ll be very strict on the public meetings outside. That means that any person that will derail from the strict rule of law—and that might happen in any meeting, because [there are] many provocateurs [who could be sent] to our meetings to start a fight or something—and that will draw reprisals.

So that’s the type of campaign we’re going to have.

If your coalition did win the election, what role would you have in the new government?

We have a ticket which is president, Levan Gachechiladze, who has already declared that he has no political ambitions that he will be the president for only as long as it is needed to make the transition to the parliamentary elections and to a parliamentary system. And I’m the prime minister of the same type.

I think the three months that will be between the presidential elections and the parliamentary elections will be a very difficult period, in which we will need maximum stability and maximum credibility, because it might be a fragile period compared to our neighbors, to get confidence from our partners.

And in that sense, I might be a very good prime minister to ensure that our relations with Russia are kept in a normal phase, that from our European and American partners we get the type of credibility that is needed to have stability in the country.

And that would be our only mission: to ensure the president and myself, with the help of the coalition, that we get parliamentary elections, that we prepare for free, really free elections, and see a majority emerging [in parliament].

And then it will be the problem of the majority to designate the prime minister, to change the constitution; in other words to go back to the 1920 constitution, which is the original constitution of Georgia—and which today’s preamble states as being the reference constitution for Georgia—and that is one of a parliamentary republic.

You’ve said this three-month transitional government would not have any plan beyond steering the country through parliamentary elections and into a new constitution. What policies can you commit to now?

There is [a document] on foreign policy orientation that is signed by the ten-party coalition, and there is one on our principles, our ten basic principles.

And that’s it. We will try to keep to those principles, to keep the foreign policy orientation and to keep stability and to prepare elections.

It seems like you’re trying to change the presidential election into a referendum on the role of the presidency.

It’s a referendum on Saakashvili, to start with. That’s clear. It’s whether you want to have President Saakashvili, or whether you want to have…a popular and respected figure in Georgia that you can be sure will never be tempted or never will have any means of becoming a real president.

So if you vote for [Gachechiladze] you’re sure that what we’re saying, that we want Georgia without a president, is going to be respected. And if you vote for me as a prime minister, it’s clear that you’re not voting for a prime minister, you’re really voting for a foreign minister plus. [One] that will ensure that we have the international environment stability that Georgia will need in the difficult and fragile transition period.

Will you have difficulty packaging this message for voters?

No, the packaging of the message is very easy. I don’t think it’s creating any problems.

But of course if you don’t have a place where you can express it and detail it, it’s very difficult to get through.

Can you run an effective election campaign without Imedi TV?

That’s our question. Kavkasia is another one.

And I want in no way the defense of Imedi to become what [the government] wants it to become, which is Patarkatsishvili’s defense. These are two very different questions.

Have you taken money from Badri Patarkatsishvili?

We have not taken any money. It’s a very different thing for Patarkatsishvili to declare that he’s giving money, and the fact that he has given to one or two persons some money to feed some people.

I’ve given more than Patarkatsishvili to feed the people of my party that were coming from regions.

So this talk about financing of the opposition and the unified opposition is again a government ploy.

Would you reject financial assistance from Patarkatsishvili?

That’s another trick, to oblige us to choose between saying “yes” or “no.”

It’s clear, that for instance, we won’t reject support from anybody in Georgia. If people want to support us, it’s not only their freedom, but in a political, electoral condition you’re looking for support of the people.

So don’t ask us to say “no” to any category of people for no reason, no valid reason.

The same is true of financial support we do not have. We do not even know today, how we pay day-after-day, the Marriott rooms that we are taking, that we are obliged to take… We have some parties that are helping, [like] the Republican Party

And, of course we will ask and get financial support. The only thing is that it has to be transparent, it has to be well-known who is going to give how much. And we don’t want any declaration of financial support that then is not followed by financial support.

If you decide you won’t be able to run an effective campaign, would you consider boycotting the presidential election?

Boycotting doesn’t have any idea here.

Because you never—and that was my position long ago, and I continue with that position—

This is not the position of the coalition?

No, the coalition has no reason to take a position on that today, and won’t take a position on that.

But my deep feeling, and I know it’s a feeling of many of the members of the coalition for other reasons, is that boycotting can [only] be done in a democratic country. In a non-democratic country, when you boycott you’re giving some more free ballots to be used for dumping into the ballot boxes. And that we know.