March has been a trial for Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and his government. First, they scrambled to rescue a dubiously slow investigation into the murder of 28 year-old Sandro Girgvliani; high officials within the ministry of interior affairs were implicated in the crime and it took over a month before Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili ordered the arrest of four minor officials. In addition, three high-ranking employees implicated in the crime eventually resigned despite the fact they had not been charged. While the arrests of MIA employees sounds impressive, it was the victim’s family and opposition-led protests that kept the case in the spotlight, forcing the ministry to act more quickly. In addition, opposition-led protests against a new law requiring all merchants use cash registers added weight to the pressure on the government. Opposition leaders like the Labor party’s Shalva Natelashvili and the Conservative’s Koba Davitashvili hoped to use the public’s displeasure about the new law as a platform against the overall popularity of the National Movement. The scandal surrounding the Girgvliani murder added weight to their cause, and the Republican opposition party and Salome Zourabichvili’s newly formed ‘Georgia’s Way’ joined the protests. However, even with newly found credibility, the opposition leaders did not manage to turn the tens of mini-protests into a surge of public support. Instead of using the issues as a platform to indicate the larger problems that threaten the government and the reform process, Natelashvili and his colleagues resorted to the same tried and true methodology of their past failures: grand standing and calls for Saakashvili’s immediate removal. While protestors came out in relatively large numbers – at its height the protest against Merabishvili and the cash registers combined brought an estimated 1,000 people to the city center – those questioned only offered mediocre support for the opposition parties themselves. It was the issues that seemed to support the protests, not a massive drop in popularity for the National Movement or a surge of popularity for the opposition parties. Last week two new scandals appeared on the political scene. A prison riot on March 27th resulted in the deaths of several inmates as well as serious injuries. However, despite the fact that both issues are potential disasters for the ruling party, there has been no sign of a serious public outcry; protestors lined up in front of the prison immediately following the riot, but opposition MPs could not even get a move for an independent investigating commission past the parliament. On March 31, the Republican Party’s Valery Gelashvili was stripped of his parliamentary credentials. According to the National Movement, there is significant proof that Gelashvili was involved in arson to help his construction business. However, the opposition claims the evidence is shaky at best. In protest to the decision, several opposition parties walked out of the parliament during the vote concerning Gelashvili, and MPs from the New Rights, Industrialists and Democratic Front (which is made up of members from the Republican and the Conservative parties) are threatening to boycott the parliament as an act of protest. Time and again, the National Movement has been able to use the opposition to their advantage, despite the fact that facts back up the opposition’s stance. For example, Davitashvili, along with other members of the united opposition Democratic Front, threatened a hunger strike in front of Prime Minister Zurab Noghaideli’s office earlier this month if the government refused to reconsider the law on cash registers. Noghaideli invited them in for a talk; on live television they bickered and shouted, interrupting the prime minister while he remained calm and cool. Regardless of who was right during their debate, Noghaideli won points for the National Movement because of his professionalism and the opposition once again resembled small children fighting in the school yard. Local elections for seats in the parliament are scheduled for this fall; primary elections among the opposition groups are slated for sometime in early summer. If the struggling opposition leaders do not find a way to regroup and show the public a united, professional struggle for justice in the National Movement-lead parliament, they run the risk of once again being defeated at the polls by the ruling party. A democracy requires a multi-party system; the sooner Georgia’s fractured opposition can turn itself into professional political parties, the better it will be for the country.