Georgia's Supreme Court has annulled the 2 November poll

Drunken polling officers, crooked block votes and covert doctoring of the official results were all witnessed by Michael Keshishian in his work for the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

He worked in the semi-autonomous Ajaria region in south-west Georgia, where some of the worst irregularities took place. He was one of more than 400 OSCE volunteers travelling from district to district to monitor the unfolding election:

"Ajaria is ruled by an authoritarian figure, who runs it like a fiefdom - and to ensure his political party was well represented in the Georgian parliament he had to engineer quite a bit of fraud," Mr Keshishian said.

At one precinct we came across a man screaming at election officials. He was bundled into a back room by five or six men

"We arrived at a polling station at a school in a village in the Kobuleti electoral district. It had been open for one-and-a-half hours but there were already 400 ballot papers in the box.

"This works out at about one vote every 13 seconds. We monitored the whole process from people finding their name, getting their papers, casting the vote and sealing their envelope and it was taking an average of six minutes.

"At one precinct we came across a man screaming at election officials.

"He was bundled into a back room back five or six men. We heard shouts and the sound of furniture being thrown.

"When we met him outside, he told us he had complained about fraud at polling stations all over the district.

"We went to check out his claims and we found the same story - ballot boxes stuffed with impossibly high numbers of votes.

'Last-minute corrections'

"After the polls closed, we witnessed the opening of the ballot boxes.

"Each voter had to fill in three forms and stuff them into an envelope. There are as many ways of doing that as there are voters.

They weren't handing their forms straight to the commission, they were going through a few last minute corrections

"But stacks of the votes were folded in exactly the same way - it seemed like the work of one person. All these papers were votes for Revival - the party of Ajaria's strongman.

"With the votes counted, officials had to fill in results forms for the District Election Commission. All the members of the commission were at its headquarters, except for the Revival party members, who were at their party headquarters nearby.

"We went across the road to the Revival party headquarters and there were all the polling officials we had had trouble with throughout the day.

"They weren't handing their forms straight to the commission, they were going through a few last minute corrections.

'Parallel vote'

"Generally we were treated with respect wherever we went. But when we arrived at a polling station, there would be a flurry of activity.

"It seemed as though lookouts were running into the polling station to alert those within of our arrival.

"At one station, all the officials were rolling drunk. The head of the station raised the ballot box above his head and smashed it on the ground to open it.

"It was wrecked, but not so bad that he couldn't use it as a table to line up the next shots of vodka.

"Some of my colleagues were physically assaulted.

"One discovered a back room where people were filling out ballot papers and stamping them. He was put in a headlock and dragged from the scene.

"I am proud to have taken part in the monitoring though. One of the key features was the US Government's funding for a parallel vote tabulation to take place.

"As the results came samples were taken from the polling stations and collated from a centre in Tbilisi.

"The parallel vote tabulation was a main piece of evidence quoted by the opposition as they forced the resignation of Eduard Shevardnadze.

"Without it, the government could quite easily have said that everything had been carried out fairly."