Georgia's Labour Party and National Movement lose leading members.

(From BBC Monitoring International Reports)

Some leading politicians have left the Georgian Labour Party and the National Movement for Democratic Reforms since the two political organizations won the recent election to the Tbilisi City Council. It is expected that the founder and leader of the National Movement, Mikheil Saakashvili, will find it difficult to maintain support among the electorate in the run-up to the 2003 parliamentary election. The following is the text of an article by Malkhaz Chachava in the 12 August issue of the Georgian newspaper Dilis Gazeti:

The parties which won the 2 June [Tbilisi City Council] election are experiencing hard times. …