Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili gestures as he delivers his annual address to the Georgian parliament in Tbilisi, Georgia on Thursday, March 15, 2007.
Photo: AP
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Mikhail Saakashvili and the Menace that Shall Remain Nameless
// Georgian President Sketches for His People the Face of the Enemy
Yesterday Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili appeared before the Georgian parliament to give his annual address to the nation. Many listeners were primarily eager to hear what course Tbilisi plans to pursue in relations with Moscow, and indeed President Saakashvili's 90-minute speech boiled down to a harsh polemic against Russia, though the president took care not to mention the country by name.
Miracle Country
The first to enter the room in the parliament building yesterday was Patriarch Ilya II, the head of the Georgian Orthodox Church, followed by Speaker of Parliament Nino Burdjanadzhe and President Mikhail Saakashvili. The president shook hands with the parliamentary deputies as he made his way to the podium, acting for all the world like the president of the United States about to give an address to Congress.
The practice of giving a "State of the Nation" address before the Georgian parliament was instituted in 1996 by former president Edward Shevernadzhe. After giving his speech, Mr. Shevernadzhe used to immediately open the floor to discussion and responded to criticism from the opposition. The current president of Georgia, however, has broken with this tradition: Mr. Saakashvili leaves the room immediately after finishing his speech and does not participate in any parliamentary discussion, claiming that every president in every other country in the world does the same.
Such was the case yesterday, and Mr. Saakashvili left in his wake numerous disgruntled members of the opposition who had prepared some pointed questions for the president. Kaha Kukava, one of the leaders of the Conservative Party, told Kommersant even before the beginning of the parliamentary session yesterday that he and several other opposition leaders were planning to boycott the president's speech. Mikhail Saakashvili did not seem to notice, or at least did not comment on their absence.
The president began his speech on an optimistic note, announcing that Georgia in the aftermath of the Rose Revolution (in other words, since he became president) has turned into "one of the world's most dynamically developing countries." Not only that, but this economic miracle has taken place despite the fact that "the sanctions that we have been threatened with since 1992 have been in place since last year, and they have blocked transportation, withheld visas, closed the markets, and left our children to freeze." "Our largest trading partner has banned the import of Georgian wine and citrus to a market where we have had a presence for 200 years," said the president. "They have begun to publicly harass Georgians there, saying to them, 'answer for your president,' but our people have proven that they do not crack under pressure! They have tried by the dirtiest methods possible to undermine our political situation, but they have not succeeded."
Having concluded his litany of the plots that are being spun against the Georgian people without voicing the name of the malefactor, Mikhail Saakashvili with evident satisfaction informed the assembled deputies that Georgia has found new markets for its wine: China and Japan. The president apparently considered it superfluous to explain that these markets are much larger than the one where Georgia has "had a presence for 200 years."
Then the Georgian leader turned to more pressing matters. As the country's main priority, he named the reestablishment of Georgia's territorial integrity and offered the breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia "the widest possible autonomy according to the highest possible international standards." Mr. Saakashvili expressed his support for the "alternative governments" in South Ossetia and Abkhazia and intimated that Georgia will now be holding talks with these governments and may even conclude an agreement about South Ossetia's status "with the government of the president of that country, Dmitry Sanakoyev." With regard to the government-in-exile in Abkhazia, the president stated that that government "is now in Kodori on the way to Sukhumi."
President Saakashvili also advocated changes in the way the situation in the breakaway republics is policed while the Abkhazian and South Ossetian conflicts are being resolved. Specifically, Mr. Saakashvili would like to involve the US and Europe more and accordingly decrease the participation of the force that has dominated the effort thus far. "The current format has completely discredited itself, [and] we need to move calmly and peacefully to a more multilateral level," he said.
In terms of foreign policy, joining NATO is the Georgian leader's top priority. He is firmly convinced that "Georgia is ready for this," since joining NATO is "the will of the Georgian people, not the wish of some political group." President Saakashvili had high praise for all of the factions in parliament who signed a memorandum concerning Georgia's entry into NATO: the Georgian parliament unanimously approved the document last Tuesday, which has made it significantly easier for the president to explain the incontrovertible advantages for Georgia of membership in the alliance.
In order to hasten Georgia's entry into NATO's ranks, last week Mr. Saakashvili announced that Georgia will expand its contingent in Iraq from 850 to 2,000 troops. "Then Georgia's military contingent in Iraq, in proportion to the population of our country, will be the largest after that of the United States," he said proudly. To thunderous applause in parliament yesterday, the president presented Corporal Mikhail Kutateladzhe, who was wounded in Iraq, with the order of Vakhtang Gorgasali, one of Georgia's highest military decorations, which is named after a legendary fifth-century king of eastern Georgia.
After presenting Kutateladzhe with the medal, the president reminded the assembled deputies of something that he considers extremely important: "There is a war going on in Iraq between good and evil. Our American friends are being shot at with the same weapons that are being used against us. This is a united battlefront."
With that statement, Mikhail Saakashvili effectively equated those who are fighting against the Americans in Iraq and the enemy who is staging such provocations against Georgia. But the Georgian president still did not name names.
"Ward #6"
President Saakashvili had hardly concluded his speech when the authorities in South Ossetia rejected his offer to grant the republic wide autonomy within Georgia. The announcement was made yesterday by Dmitry Medoyev, the South Ossetian president's special representative to Russia, who also had something to say about Mr. Saakashvili's mention of talks with the "alternative president" of South Ossetia, Dmitry Sanakoyev. "This situation reminds me of Chekhov's short story "Ward #6", because Sanakoyev doesn't represent anyone, and his cabinet is housed in a hospital in a village controlled by the Georgian authorities, just like in ward #6," said Mr. Medoyev.
Moscow's reply to the Georgian president's speech came even before he appeared before parliament to give it. Russian Federation Council Committee on CIS Affairs chairman Vadim Gustov concluded that "Georgia is involved in America's and NATO's strategy to squeeze Russia out of the Caucasus…because the country's leadership is in a precarious financial situation and is completely dependent on handouts from the United States." Mr. Gustov and several of his colleagues in the Federation Council advocated that Russia take "adequate measures" to ensure its security in the event that Georgia joins NATO.
Vladimir Novikov (Tbilisi), Oleg Zorin
All the Article in Russian as of Mar. 16, 2007
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