Opposition leaders accompanied by supporters scuffled with the police as latter prevented them from entering the Central Election Commission in the evening on May 1.

After holding a protest rally outside the Sport Palace, few hundred meters away from the CEC office, leaders of nine-party opposition bloc and their supporters moved to the CEC to, as the leaders said, “nail up doors” of CEC chair Levan Tarkhnishvili’s office. “This will be a symbolic gesture… we have prepared two big boards to nail up Tarkhnishvili’s [office] doors, so we will now go to the CEC,” MP Levan Gachechiladze, the leader of the bloc, told supporters at the rally.

Police cordon sealing off the CEC, however, barred opposition activists to go inside the commission’s administrative building.

Speaking at the rally, MP Gachechiladze also said: “If he [Levan Tarkhnishvili] announces the rigged results [of the May parliamentary elections], I will personally go to him, grab him into his necktie and bring him out for people’s judgment.”

“We want to warn Tarkhnishvili, the grey cardinal [CEC secretary Gizo] Mchedlidze and Saakashvili and his administration, that we will not tolerate ballot-rigging,” MP Davit Gamkrelidze, leader of the New Rights Party – part of the nine-party bloc - said.