Draculas and Defectors: It’s Political Silly Season!

OPED

This is a silly season – call it the cucumber time if you wish – in most countries of the civilized world. In Georgia, this political season of the year should also be qualified as one but it seems like we are still active in political bouts and contests. Politics in Georgia never enjoys a break. We are always on with political sweat pouring out in smelly, sticky and oozy floods- we are up to our necks in it. On the other hand, this is quite understandable – the country is right now headed for the next parliamentary elections, to determine whether Georgia is going to be ruled in the same old one-party fashion or by an intra-parliamentary coalition of motley political forces.

This might not sound terribly important to a regular outsider, but for us locals it could mean something decisive in the country’s political life because we are going to be faced with a totally new style of managing the nation. So the general excitement in Georgia is overwhelming. This is at least the impression we are getting from our television screens: the government is focused on making shuffles in the cabinet; the disgruntled ministers are changing their political orientation and the content of their comments momentarily; the irritated head of the administration is trying hard to be as reserved and balanced in his remarks as he possibly can; the ruling party is lining up the parliamentary membership candidates and doing their presentations to respective electorates ubiquitously, the accompanying speeches reminding me of some very remote times of my socialist youth; the most prominent opposition powers are trying to eat the ruling party alive, doing their utmost to suck the governmental blood more viciously and profusely than any Dracula – if in politics –could; courts are unrecognizable in the worst sense of the word; the economy is simply left to its own miserable devices; the newly-born players in the electoral game are eating their hearts out to prove they are suggesting something new and more practicable to save the almost perished day for the Nation; the party turncoats are multiplying fast and are eager to rid themselves of the stigma of defectors, but are still taken as traitors, easily adapting themselves to new political nests and platforms; the leaders in the heavily and perilously mined political field are becoming increasingly boring and unattractive, having stereotyped themselves to the point of zero discernibility; the West is watching the process with a keen eye not to miss anything that might be reversing the process of democracy in Georgia, thus selling out the hard-hammered western values offhand; and Russia is looking for favorable moments in the process to pounce on Georgia’s preponderance towards Euro-Atlantic sentiments, having her favorites in the zone and feeding them surreptitiously.

So the ideological war is still on about Georgia and in Georgia. Ideologies clash on this territory, whatever is left of it. Meanwhile, most of us future electors are exhausted and spaced out, having no desire to be bothered by eager political wannabes and their nonstop ballot-mania, who never get tired of pestering us for votes in order to stay in business or to come into it at any cost.

One of the reasons, as I see it, for the political heat not subsiding in Georgia even in the summer time is that the political arena is very densely populated in general, and I suspect that this is happening because politics is one of the most popular specialties here. There should be something enticing and lucrative in the trade. Why would I bother myself, and spend my money into the bargain, if there is no axe at all to grind in the entire deal?

Nugzar B. Ruhadze