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POLITICAL SITUATION IN GEORGIA AFTER THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS
MALKHAZ SALDADZE,
Political science PhD student at the Ilia Chavchavadze State University, Executive Secretary of the Ethnic Minorities Council with the Georgian Ombudsman, Tbilisi
Eurasian Home: “How will President Mikheil Saakashvili’s team use the Russian factor in the forthcoming parliamentary election campaign: will they speak about the close ties between the opposition and Moscow and about Russia’s aggressive interference in the domestic affairs of Georgia, as they did before, or will they put emphasis on improvement of the relations with Russia and ascribe this merit to Saakashvili?”
According to the events that followed November 2007, the further social attitudes and, later on, the outcome of the presidential elections, the conspiracy theory did not prove its value as a mechanism of mobilization of the public to support the United National Movement candidate. At that, the effort to discredit the opposition by accusing it of the collusion with a foreign power was conducive to the criticism and growing distrust of the Georgian government’s democratic intentions from the international organizations and the majority of the Western governments. As a result, during Saakashvili’s election campaign there was no talk about Russia’s espionage. Hence, the anti-Russian rhetoric is unlikely to recommence before the parliamentary elections, in particular since after his inauguration Saakashvili claimed that he was ready to improve the relations with Russia.
The Georgian authorities realized that it was necessary to settle the conflict with Russia as the morbid socioeconomic situation emerged in a number of large agrarian regions of the country after Russia had imposed the economic embargo against Georgia. Of course, the Russian government does not qualify its anti-Georgian economic measures as sanctions or embargo, but those “sanitary” measures are clearly connected with politics. Russia tried to force the Georgian authorities to behave more adequately towards the strong neighbor. Probably Saakashvili’s government would continue to turn a blind eye to the socioeconomic consequences of the bad relations with Russia, if it were not for the events occurring in October-November 2007 when the Russian-Georgian relations became one of the major points of the criticism of the government by the opposition along with the issues of the constitutional order, supremacy of law and civil rights (it is quite possible that the conspiracy theory, which is said to vanish after 1991, reappeared due to the fact that the opposition had criticized the government for its policy towards Russia). Till now the opposition made references to Russia more often than the authorities. To all appearances, the United National Movement will turn to this rhetoric before the legislative elections. Although there is no telling how soon the two countries will improve their relations especially as the problems, which worsened those relations, cannot be solved in the near future. Thus, it will be difficult to say to which extent one or another policy-maker can attribute the normalization of the intergovernmental relations to himself on the threshold of the parliamentary elections.
Eurasian Home: “Will President Saakashvili’s attitude to the opposition change in the run-up to the parliamentary elections? Will he try to carry on a dialogue, co-opt the opposition members onto the government agencies? Will the opposition get along well with the President?”
In spite of Mikheil Saakashvili’s initiative to offer the opposition politicians posts in the government, nothing was done in this direction. Apparently, neither the authorities nor the opposition were ready for such a turn.
The government officials regard themselves as winners and it comes quite natural after the foreign observers approved the election results. President Saakashvili’s statement was not followed by any moves or statements on the part of high-ranking officials belonging to his entourage, above all the Prime Minister. On the other hand, it is important to take into consideration the potential subject of the dialogue. Probably, the authorities will continue to persuade the opposition to recognize the official election returns and admit that they lost the election. The opposition consents to discuss the constitutional amendments, the issues of staffing of the Central Election Committee, administration of the election process and unmuzzle the central media, above all the public television. The wishes of the opposition and the public, which supports it, are quite understandable. They speak about creating such an election atmosphere where the parties will compete with each other on equal footing, and which will make it possible to acknowledge that the elections returns are fair. However, the fact that the opinions about the talks subject were divided, in spite of holding the concrete meetings, leads to the countries’ inability to build their relations on the basis of mutual confidence and to start a dialogue.
Most likely, the meetings with the opposition leaders, about which the information leaked into the press, were held to find out their attitude and vision of the further developments in the country. It is necessary to note that although those meetings were ineffectual in bringing the parties to terms, they helped the participants to reach the consensus concerning the forms of the struggle for power. The opposition members stated and proved that they were not extremists and they were not going to overthrow the government through their large-scale peaceful protest marches in Tbilisi on January 13 and 20. The opposition seeks to use the protest attitudes of the society ahead of the parliamentary elections, but on the other hand, the opposition members cannot afford to drop the radical rhetoric since they are afraid to discredit themselves in their adherents’ eyes.
Eurasian Home: “Can the opposition be united to a still more considerable degree before the elections with a view to form a single powerful party?”
A more cohesive alliance and a single opposition party are unlikely to be built. Firstly, the parties belonging to the single bloc have too different ideological platforms. Secondly, the parties were united on the basis of the shared vision that Georgia’s constitutional system must be changed – the presidential republic must become the parliamentary one. This clearly indicates that those opposition parties are going to compete against each other in the time of the future constitutional system. But it does not mean that individual parties, in particular those with nationalistic ideological platform cannot form a single party.
Eurasian Home: “If the United National Movement does not get the majority during the legislative elections, on what terms will the President and the Parliament be with each other? Are the coalition government, the Parliament dissolution and the early elections possible in the event of a conflict with the President?”
All of those scenarios are possible. Now there is no predicting the course of political events in the country. One can say with certainty only that if the opposition wins the parliamentary elections, it will seek amending the Constitution in order to change the constitutional system in the country, which implies a conflict between the President and the Parliament. It is difficult to say how the government will oppose such changes. The Parliament may be dissolved and the opposition may react to that. At worst, such a kind of scenario may remind skeptics of the situation in Russia in autumn 1993.
January 30, 2008
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