The Georgian confrontation

If you cannot make good on your promises its better to keep quiet. This lesson can be applied to Georgia. They promised to overthrow Saakashvili on May 25. They didn’t. They pro-mised to hold their parade on Independence Day. They didn’t. Quite the opposite. When the confrontation with the forces of law and order was in the offing, the oppositionists scattered, leaving the people who believed them and went out into Tbilisi’s squares and streets behind. As they say, if you pledge don’t hedge. They made a commitment but didn’t have the nerve or desire to carry it through. It seems that they just like the confrontation process, regardless of the results.

Unfortunately, the problems of the Georgian opposition are to some extent common throughout the CIS — the rejection of the go-vernment and political and practical weakness. They make unfulfillable promises and then shout at the anti-popular regimes and police states. They have to finally assume personal responsibility for their deeds and appeals to go into streets. Those opposition leaders who loudly denounced the government abandoned their supporters when the latter killed a policeman with their car. The government didn’t raise a finger to break them up since they had the corresponding permissions to hold demonstrations. The police interfered only after they had run out of time. According to the head of the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affaires Grigol Vashadze, the policemen didn’t break up the meeting but prevented acts of delinquency. “A group of marginal persons tried to wreck the most sacred holiday of the Georgian people. It wasn’t dispersal, just crime prevention. Nobody will ever hinder us from celebrating the most important holiday in our country.”

Appealing to order the opposition broke it by its actions. Will average voters trust it and support it at the elections? Moreover, the ambitions of the mixed opposition leaders are completely exaggerated. They can’t come to an understanding and fight, and later hypocritically conclude a truce. Do they really want to overthrow Saakashvili or just play around?

The Day asked the Georgian political scientist Prof. Niki Chitadze to comment on the recent events in Tbilisi:

“Some outside forces aspired to wreck the Independence Day parade and destabilize the situation in Georgia. Unfortunately, some people had been killed The Day before, including a police lieutenant and a former policeman. One of the jeeps from the opposition motorcade was going very quickly and the policeman tried to stop it. This event was filmed by the video surveillance cameras and will be spread in the media. Besides, some people were injured. It’s very sad.

“The opposition and its event don’t have significant support among the people. Two to five thousand people took part in the meetings and demonstrations. There’s also the constructive part of the opposition willing to participate in the parliamentary elections next year if the election code is amended. There’s a radical opposition — the Popular Assembly led by Nino Burjanadze, and the Georgian Party with the former Minister of Defense Okruashvili among its leaders. The latter has a clear pro-Russian orientation. Okruashvili promised to come back from emigration to Georgia under any circumstances. However, he hasn’t come back yet. Meanwhile the parties constantly quarrel and exchange accusations.

“According to the public opinion poll held by the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute (both US), the rating of these two parties isn’t higher than two percent. Few people participate in the meetings and demonstrations. There’s a video showing that the participants of the meetings were given money in order to bribe them and prepare something similar to a Molotov cocktail. The meetings are mostly attended by former officials and fired governors. They don’t have any political program or ideology except for one requirement: ‘Misha must resign.’ Nothing about changing the social sphere, public health and other sectors.”

Of course, President Saakashvili’s rule is far from being perfectly democratic. Georgia has a lot of problems, notably the high level of unemployment (20 percent of people capable of working are jobless). They still didn’t manage to find a motor for economic growth, though the worst of the crisis has been avoided. The government’s expectations for developing tourism were not realized. True, it’s growing and foreign capital is flowing in, but not enough to solve the unemployment troubles. There are problems with the freedom of speech, though the opposition has its television channel and newspapers. By the way, the latter aren’t very popular and have small circulations. Moreover, the so-called radical opposition treats journalists much worse than the government. There were several incidents when the opposition beat up the journalists who supposedly covered events incorrectly. This proves that Saakashvili’s opponents aren’t better than the president in what concerns freedom of speech. The requirement to cover the events “correctly” is nothing but censorship backed by physical force. If this is what happens before they take office, what will happen after?

At the same time we can’t ignore some progress in fighting corruption; the conditions for business have improved significantly and become much more transparent. They actually managed to eradicate everyday corruption. In particular, Georgian traffic policemen don’t take bribes. All of this proves that the path of reforms is never smooth. One has to overcome a lot objective and subjective obstacles.

If the Ukrainian opposition wants to come to power democratically it has to learn Georgia’s lessons. The first and most important one is that it’s not enough to denounce the government. Everyone is sick and tired of criticism and sometimes it’s just disgusting. We need a clear and constructive reform plan, and ways to implement it. The second lesson is that more and more Ukrainians are disappointed with the government, but it doesn’t mean that they like the opposition. They don’t trust it either. If so, the struggle is doomed. That is why Saakashvili calmly spent his time visiting other countries. He isn’t afraid of the opposition. Moreover, it’s really useful and even helpful to him. Does our opposition want to be like this? It has less and less time to improve and to work on its mistakes and the mistakes made by others. 

The Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs arrested the people charged with killing two persons during yesterday’s dispersal of the meeting near the Georgian Parliament. The ministry’s official statement reads that they arrested Burjanadze, Ivan Chigvinadze (her assistant), and a member of her Democratic Movement Zakhary Zurashvili.

The leader of the parliamentary majority Goka Gabashvili approves of the actions of the police, which dispersed the demonstration of the Popular Assembly. “The police did everything they could in order not break up the meeting; its organizers were warned several times that they had no right to continue the meeting after 12 p.m.”, remarked Gabashvili. According to him, the authorities offered several places in the city to continue the demonstration but the organizers refused.

The EU Ambassador to Georgia Philip Dimitrov also thinks that the meeting’s dispersal was “organized and legal.” He also remarked that the street meetings are often accompanied by the mass skirmishes and if the demonstrators have a specific time period they have to stick to it.

In turn, Sozar Subari claimed that Nino Burjanadze has to assume moral responsibility for the incident on Rustaveli Avenue in Tbilisi.