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THE GEORGIAN OPPOSITION DOES NOT RECOGNIZE THE LEGITIMACY OF THE NEW CABINET
DAVID BERDZENISHVILI,
Сo-chairman of the parliamentary faction “Democratic Front” of the Republican Party, one of the United Opposition leaders, Tbilisi
The fact that the opposition has filed its memorandum to the authorities does not indicate that the protest is gaining momentum. I would not say that the opposition is acting more toughly either. Our position has remained unchanged since the presidential election campaign. The memorandum is the logical continuation of the manifesto signed by the opposition members in October, 2007. We have always stated that we do not recognize the legitimacy of Mikheil Saakashvili's presidency.
More than that, even the European officials had difficulties with defining the events that occurred on January 5 as the elections. The OSCE, the Council of Europe and the EU observers provide documentary evidence of that. The documents read that the elections somehow met the standards. The rest of the text casts doubt on the fairness of the elections.
This was seen during Mikheil Saakashvili’s address to the European Council. He was criticized by many European parliamentarians. For example, the Swiss euro-MP Andreas Gross, the head of the largest faction of the Socialist Party, said frankly that the executive power had deprived the Georgian people of the second round of the elections. The representative of the right-wing parties’ association, which the United National Movement seeks to join, made it clear that the Georgian ruling party can not be admitted to the association after those elections. The German parliamentarians criticized Saakashvili during his address and the preparation of the resolution. The address of head of the monitoring group Matthias Ersh contained more criticism than kind words. So all the USA, the EU, NATO and PACE officials say that the parliamentary elections must be held in free and transparent atmosphere.
It was clear from the outset that the opposition is not going to work in the new government. We do not consider the President and the executive to be legitimate. We cannot cooperate with the non-legitimate government. Saakashvili declares publicly that he is ready to cooperate with the opposition. But his political actions witness that it is not so. He has fired the officials responsible for holding the elections and the governors of the regions where he failed to get the majority of vote. He retains the governors of those regions where he took 70 percent. There are three such regions. That is Saakashvili does not match words with deeds.
He realizes that he will have to make concessions at the legislative level, and tries to strengthen his hand by the executive power.
On the whole, I believe that the opposition and the West’s intensive efforts will make it possible to hold the forthcoming parliamentary elections in a more democratic setting than the presidential ones. But I am far from supposing that those elections will be absolutely fair.
Now we work with the ruling United National Movement in the Parliament. Of course, I am not delighted with their work but we believe that the existing Parliament is legitimate and we work with the ruling party. We do not appeal to the non-legitimate executive power, in the memorandum we do not appeal to Saakashvili as the President. As the leader of the United National Movement Saakashvili can try to carry on a dialogue with the opposition, but we will not appeal to him as the President.
There is no telling how the opposition will behave after the parliamentary elections. If the United National Movement gets less than one third of the vote the opposition can form the constitutional majority. Then we will change the country’s Constitution, thus putting an end to the non-legitimate presidential power in Georgia. Even without the constitutional majority we will look on Saakashvili as the non-legitimate President.
Following the elections the opposition is unlikely to work in the executive bodies on the coalition basis and cooperate with the non-legitimate government. At the same time, if the opposition comes to terms with the United National Movement, it is possible that we will find a compromise.
But I doubt that we will be able to cooperate within the framework of the existing Constitution. This does not mean that we will not observe the laws. I remind you that we did not consider former leader of Adjara Aslan Abashidze legitimate. For all that, we recognized the actual state of affairs.
As regards the ministerial reshuffle, it can not be called so. Nothing has changed seriously. Moreover, the leading faction of Freedom Institute has preserved and even strengthened its position. The new government officials include two experts – Ghia Nodia, Director of the Caucasian Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development, who was appointed Minister of Education, and Temur Iakobashvili, Executive Vice-President of the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies, who was appointed State Minister on Reintegration. Iakobashvili is not very famous in Georgia, but Nodia is well-known. But in my opinion, Nodia ceased to be an expert about four years ago.
Both of them proved long ago that, as a matter of fact, they are an informal part of the government. From now on they are the government officials.
The new government’s composition points to the fact that Saakashvili has poor human resources. He faces the proverbial ‘Hobson’s choice’ and thus has to deal with the existing factions. He has created this system and became its hostage. It is entirely possible that he will put Parliamentary Speaker Nino Burjanadze on the top of the United National Movement lists. But her faction is much smaller than that of “Freedom Institute”. That’s why she is unlikely to act against that faction.
February 1, 2008
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