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“GEORGIAN PRESIDENT MIKHEIL SAAKASHVILI HAS NO PERSONNEL RESOURCES”
DAVID BERDZENISHVILI,
Political Secretary of the Georgian Republican Party, Tbilisi
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has no personnel resources, which is shown by another change of Prime Minister. Grigol Mgaloblishvili who had held office of Prime-Minister for three months, resigned on January 30.
There are different rumors about his resignation that are difficult to comment upon. The official version does not stand up to criticism: Mr. Mgaloblishvili is said to be seriously ill. But hadn’t the authorities known that before he was appointed as Prime Minister?
As regards a new candidate Nika Gilauri, he is loyal to Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. He is not an influential politician in Georgia. Most probably, Nika Gilauri is a protégé of Minister of the Interior Vano Merabishvili, a grey eminence of the Georgian government. So, all of that indicates that the President has no personnel resources.
It is also significant that Mikheil Saakashvili appointed a NGO representative Dmitry Shashkin as Minister on Execution of Punishments and Probation [On February 1, 2009 two new ministries were established in Georgia – the Ministry on Execution of Punishments and Probation and the Ministry on Regional Development and Infrastructure –ed.]. Dmitry Shashkin has been a head of the Georgian office of the U.S. Republican Institute for several years. But he does not enjoy Georgian NGOs’ respect.
President Saakashvili had appointed the NGO representatives to the government previously. Those included Temur Yakobashvili, Minister for Reintegration, Ghia Nodia, former Minister of Education. Temur Yakobashvili and especially Ghia Nodia were respectable and influential NGO representatives. The same thing is not true for Dmitry Shashkin. This also indicates the lack of the President’s personnel resources.
Therefore, the replacement of Prime Ministers doesn’t change the situation, since it’s no problem of the Cabinet, but of President Mikheil Saakashvili. So, the Georgian oppositionists raise the issue of the President’s resignation and come out for holding early presidential and parliamentary elections.
Today Mikheil Saakashvili’s rating is low, especially in Tbilisi (a third of the Georgian voters live in the capital). According to the public opinion polls conducted in early December, the rating of the President and his party "The National Movement Democratic Front" in Tbilisi is 11%. Even the rating of former President Eduard Shevardnadze was not lower than 18%.
Mikheil Saakashvili’s popularity in Tbilisi shows that the other Georgian voters, except those in the southern regions of Georgia, support the President little. Usually the election returns in the entire Georgia are the same as those in Tbilisi. This was clear during the recent presidential and parliamentary elections. At that time Mr. Saakashvili lost in Tbilisi as well as in virtually all regional capitals and small towns.
Over the past twenty years Georgia has experienced three authoritarian regimes - under Presidents Zviad Gamsakhurdia, Eduard Shevardnadze and Mikheil Saakashvili, and none of them was successful. All the authorities’ efforts to create an authoritarian regime in Georgia have failed. While the authoritarianism does not produce state’s collapse in Azerbaijan, it causes the collapse of both the government and the state in Georgia.
Apart from that, Mikheil Saakashvili turned out the most unlucky politician among his two predecessors. Zviad Gamsakhurdia unleashed the war in South Ossetia and lost it, but Tbilisi continued to control the southern part of the region. Eduard Shevardnadze unleashed the war in Abkhazia, he also lost it but the Kodori gorge and a part of Gali District were controlled by Georgia as before. After the Russian-Georgian conflict in August 2008 Mikheil Saakashvili lost control over all those territories.
Given the current situation, the Georgian opposition is forming new political alternatives. The negotiations, which are carried on by the Republican Party, the New Rights Party and Irakli Alasania, former Georgia’s representative to the UN, who is creating his political force, are coming to an end. I hope that as early as February those three forces will build a new democratic and patriotic coalition, which will be attractive for some other political movements.
With account taken of the built-in advantage and electoral fraud the Georgian authorities would take one third of the electors’ votes, our new coalition would get another one third and still another one third would be taken by other political forces, above all, the new party of former Speaker Nino Burjanadze, the “Democratic Movement “United Georgia”, the Labor Party and the Christian-Democratic Party of Giorgi Targamadze, who is formally the parliamentary opposition leader but is not regarded as an oppositionist. Anyway, Giorgi Targamadze is popular in some way and all three forces in question can be elected to the Parliament during the next elections. Those three political forces can lay down the foundations of forming other political blocs and alliances.
February 4, 2009
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