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GEORGIAN OPPOSITION AND GOVERNMENT MAKE A PAUSE
ZAAL ANJAPARIDZE,
Political analyst, Tbilisi
After May 26 (Georgia’s Independence Day), when an impressively large-scale rally organized by the opposition had shown that too many people in Georgia sought to make Mikheil Saakashvili and his team resign, the opposition and the ruling party decided to weaken their confrontation and to step back from the “Red Line”. On May 26, the sides were just about to cross the dangerous “Red Line” and to go too far since the protest mood was reaching the crucial moment and the people at the rally demanded that the opposition leaders take radical and decisive measures. Meanwhile, the authorities were firm to give the protesters a strong rebuff.
Once again the Georgian Orthodox Church, including Ilia II, Catholicos – Patriarch of All Georgia, has been drawn into the political processes, as it had occurred many times recently. The involvement of church into political processes has almost become a hallmark of the Georgian contemporary politics. In his statements made on May 26 and 29, Ilia II said that it was not reasonable to overthrow the President by using force every time and, at the same time, he called for relieving the tension at any cost, including by holding the early elections. These statements by Ilia II are still being publicly discussed in Georgia. The considerable presence of the church and religious factor in Georgia’s politics, which is getting a part of the political culture, rather holds away Georgia from Europe and the West and casts doubt on Georgia’s status of a secular state.
This is one of the reasons for understanding the factors of the confrontation between the ruling party and opposition groups. It would be a simplification to regard this confrontation only in the light of a mere power struggle. Except purely political factors, this confrontation is in many respects based on the antagonism between the “postmodernist” (in the ruling party’s understanding) values, which have been aggressively implanted in the country by Mikheil Saakashvili and his team, and the “traditionalist” values that the most part of the Georgian society follows. The opposition keeps accusing the authorities of their attempts to demoralize the society by destroying the Georgian traditions and values, which mobilizes the protest electorate much stronger than the calls to overthrow Saakashvili.
The process of eventual “divorcement” of opposition parties, which started right after the May 26 protest rally, downgraded the protest actions to certain extent as several large opposition groups (Alliance for Georgia, National Forum and the Labor Party) decided to disjoin protest marches in Tbilisi and extend the protest to regions where the opposition’s stance is weaker. A number of subjective and objective reasons for this “divorcement” include the lack of the consensus among the oppositionists about their unification around a single leader, who could have given a new impetus to the opposition movement. From now on, the opposition leaders, while acting separately, will try to position themselves as recognized national leaders through the public support rather than through the support of a narrow opposition association. The public support will evidently make the opposition leaders far more legitimate from the political point of view. In the near months new alliances and groups are expected to be formed in the opposition camp. The consent of some opposition leaders to negotiate with the authorities through the EU mediation, the church’s appeal to start a dialogue with concessions to each other, and the government’s hints that the fresh elections could be held, indicate that the compromise could be reached. Holding of free and fair early parliamentary elections would be the most efficient compromise to relieve the current political crisis.
June 8, 2009
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