Choosing between the Evils
The Price of the Question
While the smell of tear gas is still in the air in Tbilisi and other Georgian cities see large-scale protests, it is impossible to say what we are witnessing in Georgia. Is it the end of opposition, the beginning of the end of Saakashvili, or the end of another attempt to democratize Georgia? But some things are already clear.
Most importantly, Saakashvili’s credibility is collapsing. If opposition organizes thousand-strong rallies, it means that the charisma of the Rose Revolution winner is waning. Any former Soviet society can be manipulated, and the same charisma would be enough to prevent such impressive protests. But Saakashvili somehow contrived to fall out with the elite. A too great number of his former allies has fallen prey to his quarrelsome style of presidency. In a purely authoritarian regime all of them would be behind the bars but Georgia is after all is not purely authoritarian in terms of the regime or political culture. That is why the briefly imprisoned opposition wannabe Okruashvili had to be expelled to Europe so that he doesn’t become a banner of the opposition. That is why the crackdown followed only on the seventh day of protests. That is why the president’s closest ally Nino Burdzhanadze let the protesters in the parliament to save them from the gas attack. Whatever the current events end in, there is one accusation that President Saakashvili will never shrink. He acted “not in the Georgian ways” of politics.
A new revolution does look a likely event. We still vividly remember all Orange Revolutions and the toppling of Gamsakhurdia’s regime in Georgia. But let us recollect a great number of mass protests which fell flat in Yerevan or Minsk alike. Predicting events of political turmoil is more difficult that predicting actions of a natural disaster. But one pattern can still be traced. A revolution is successful only when the country’s course of development is at stake. In Georgia, authorities and opposition do see eye to eye on most strategic issues. What is at stake is just the power struggle, and the incumbent authorities have some advantage.
However, recent events are badly damaging to Saakashvili in any case. If he yields to opposition, chances of his party and his candidacy at the upcoming elections will jeopardized. If he cracks down on the protests violently, he will either become a dictator or at least make a bigger row with the political elite. Opposition cannot be called winners either. They are hardly united by anything except for animosity to Saakashvili and general West-friendly sentiment. In the short history of an independent Georgia, the crowd topped two presidents, and it was twice that a successor of the overthrown leader won a following election on a landslide. But who will win now if Saakashvili becomes a third ousted leader?
The problem of Georgia is not that it is a democratic country. A democracy has failed there once again because the elites picked up the arms and started clashing with each other again. The problem is not in an authoritarian Saakashvili – there are lots of more authoritarian politicians in post-Soviet countries. Georgia’s problem is that choosing between the two worst forms of governance it will pick the both once again.
Boris Makarenko, deputy director general of the Center for Political Technologies
All the Article in Russian as of Nov. 08, 2007
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