Sophisticated Politics: Ogden on The Aftermath

OPED

Georgian Dream claimed a victory in last Saturday's elections, but I really feel as though this was a loss for the opposition rather than a win for the ruling team. No opposition party managed to persuade the public that they might do better behind the reins of power, and so the people seemed to think that they might as well just stick with what they've got.

Oddly enough, I am inclined to agree. I have minor reservations; the classy and intelligent David Usupashvili, for example, will be replaced as Speaker, and I can only hope that the government finds someone to fill the post who is not from the Kakha Kaladze school of politics (by which I mean a football pitch). Georgia needs no more actors, singers or athletes in positions of power.

I am no fan of the Georgian Dream party. Bidzina Ivanishvili is far too involved with the party he founded and has since claimed to distance himself from, despite his behaviour and actions suggesting the contrary. However, their staying in power now is essential for the nation's stability.

Normally, I do not even like to acknowledge the Georgian love of conspiracy theories, since they are nearly always taken as truth beyond all doubt by their proponents and slammed by detractors without either side engaging in any meaningful debate. Various opposition parties – Saakashvili and his UNM party being the most prominent – have this week said that the elections were rigged by the government, despite all evidence to the contrary presented by local and foreign observers. Radical members of the UNM even suggested taking to the streets, and a fierce internal debate was held on whether to actually enter Parliament with the seats the party did manage to win (they have since decided to fulfil their parliamentary mandates).

If the UNM had come back into power, we would have witnessed a purge of the former government, with mass arrests and reprisals for Georgian Dream having imprisoned various UNM members since coming to power. Saakashvili would have returned, and likely taken control once again. Georgian Dream's rule has been far from perfect, with such wonderful disasters as Kakha Kaladze and David Narmania being given positions of responsibility and power, but if anything could make Georgia's foreign partners reconsider their involvement with the country, it would be a vengeful UNM running the government again.

I have the utmost respect for how President Saakashvili dragged this country out of the Dark Ages and turned it into a model that almost every former Soviet republic outside of the Baltic states has failed to emulate. But I believe that is what he is best at; taking a broken nation and fixing it. Running it, however, should be the responsibility of someone else, and while Georgian Dream have been far from perfect, no government ever is, and they have not been the disaster that UNM voters thought they would be back in 2012.

I mentioned the Georgian love of conspiracy theories a few paragraphs ago, and while I agree that Bidzina Ivanishvili has far too much influence in the Georgian Dream party, if GD really were pro-Russian – as the UNM and Saakashvili claim – I can't help but think that they might have worked a bit harder to derail Georgia's EU and NATO ambitions. The fact that Georgia has not been given its visa liberalization with the EU or NATO membership is no fault of Georgia's, and if GD wanted to abandon the country's Western course I don't believe it would be too hard.

I have written elsewhere of how the West needs to find the courage to make a decision over Georgia, and how the Georgian people have every right to be furious at both NATO and the EU, and with this in mind I don't think it would be too hard for GD to say 'We have fulfilled all our obligations for visa liberalization; our troops have died in pointless NATO campaigns. Enough is enough'. I'm not a GD politician, but I think I could make it stick. Nino Burjanadze no longer has the public's trust (or the style, sorry Nino) to carry it off.

I was glad to see that Irakli Alasania had the sense to quit his Free Democrats party; a fresh face is what's needed. I believe that the UNM would have done rather better if Saakashvili had done the same. Many voters were turned off by the thought that a vote for the UNM was a vote for his return; ironically, if he had stepped back the UNM might have won and then his return would have been assured.

I admire Saakashvili as a reformer, but for all his iron purpose he remains too volatile, emotional, and impulsive to lead. Both the former President and the UNM must acknowledge that the party is now better off without him at this stage; while mass arrests were what was needed thirteen years ago, a more sophisticated type of politics is in play now. The smaller opposition parties, meanwhile, have a simpler (but not easier) task ahead of them, in trying to attract voters to their causes.

Tim Ogden

CARTOON: Brian Patrick Grady