Government vs. Opposition

Op-ed

What we have today in Georgia qualifies as the weirdest political situation this country has known in the last thirty years of its post-soviet existence. The nation is faced with an electoral dilemma of content and magnitude it has never known before, due to which the government looks seemingly weakened but strong anyway, and its opposition looks seemingly strong but weakened in any case.

Here is the fairest possible overall picture of the national political scenery: the opposition has lost the nerve, cause and confidence it is always bragging about, and conversely, the government has acquired the nerve, cause and confidence it has never been proud of. The opposition has never before presented itself to the public as so angered and depleted of political energy and diplomatic acumen as it currently has, and the government has never before defied so strongly the arguments of its opponents as it is doing presently.

The disintegrated but temporarily united oppositional forces of the country are hopeful that the public has enough ear and tolerance for them, and relying on this dream, they see the collapse of the current government only through hundreds of thousands of grownup citizens taking to the streets, whereas the integrated, but temporarily shrunken government, basing its action on strict research of public judgment, makes quick and unexpected moves that are totally compatible with the judgment and attitude of the majority of Georgia’s population.

The opposition is making forceful steps to lure the crowds into the street to promote its cause of ousting the current government, but all in vain, because the public is tired of the political faces that have been on the air in the last score of years, leading the public nowhere. They want to stay indoors while the government makes the necessary steps very thoughtfully and gingerly to keep its people safe, and the hard-obtained national freedom and democracy intact. The people of Georgia no longer desire to waste time in the streets making crucial political decisions. For this, they have joined the healthiest course of democratic development within the parliamentary, governmental and judicial walls of the country, where the principals of representative democracy, checks and balances, self-government and unalienable rights work between the government and the governed, and tend to be the dominant instruments of freedom and democracy.

The outraged leaders of the opposition are bending backwards to have the streets of Georgia flooded with socially angry and politically poised electorate, not having the faintest clue of the enigma that moves the masses in the direction of sweeping the government from its ruling position, while the government continues handling the situation in a classic fashion of keeping the country up and running and its citizens on the safest possible side. The opposition blocks access to the building of parliament and locks its gates and the government unblocks the path to parliamentary offices and unlocks the gateway to where the government remains functional to run the country.

By Nugzar B. Ruhadze