Sticks and Carrots for Everyone
The Price of the Question
President Saakashvili made it to Strasbourg after all. I would not want to view it as a challenge to Russia. Europeans had far better reasons for inviting the Georgian leader.
Good news for Europe is that all recent developments including the presidential election have proven that almost everyone in Georgia wants to move closer to Europe. No matter how fierce opposition is in criticizing the West for recognizing the election, the striving to go to the West and the authority of the West as a referee are equally strong for opposition and the incumbent president. Bad news is that not only the recent election but Georgian politics as such are too far from meeting democratic standards. Europe may have overcome the euphoria of going south and east but the excitement has not waned altogether. There is still plenty of “countries with the European vector” not embraced by the integration process. Serbia, Moldova and Ukraine are among them. What about Georgia, then?
Georgia is something more complicated than Romania, Albania or even Ukraine although the case is not hopeless, European lawmakers believe. Ethnic conflicts, authoritarian populist leaders and radical opposition – there was the whole lot of it in the countries that have successfully integrated into Europe or are on the way to it. But nowhere apart from Serbia have these factors reached such a high concentration as in Georgia. It is going to take a lot of time and money – as well as sticks and carrots - to lead Georgia to Europe.
Mikhail Saakashvili got a carrot from Europe for ordering the election after all, lifting emergency rule and stopped in violent steps when he was asked to. He got another carrot for becoming the third winner of a presidential election in a CIS country in this century to muster slightly more than 50 percent (apart from Armenia in 2003 and Ukraine in 2004). But he will get a stick for abusing the administrative resource and, more importantly, for brining Georgian politics to a deplorable state after the Rose Revolution that Europe was applauding.
As for Georgian opposition, it will get a carrot for showing its fighting qualities, constraining itself to democratic actions, resisting the administrative resource and finally capping it. It will get more carrots for stopping street demonstrations and deciding to consider the upcoming parliamentary campaign the runoff of the presidential election. Finally, it will be praised for recognizing the authority of the West. But it will get a stick for the maximalism it inherited from the incumbent president.
No personal charm will help Saakashvili convince European lawmakers that Georgia is ready to join the European Union. There are too many things against local authorities. But Europe has no reasons to push Georgia aside. The recent presidential election is just a mid-term result. The next grade the West is going to give Georgia is for the parliamentary campaign. Then Europe will be working with authorities and opposition alike. This is the way Europe was dealing with all Central and South European countries. This work saw failures like Kosovo and instances of duplicity like Estonia and Latvia. But there were more examples of success.
Boris Makarenko, deputy director general of the Center for Political Technologies
All the Article in Russian as of Jan. 25, 2008
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