Defining Saakashvili

Op-Ed

Can’t they find a real McCoy Ukrainian in the entire country who will set up a political fight for them? - Putin wondered, seeing instead the Georgian Saakashvili running like crazy up and down the streets of Kyiv. Well, anybody has the right to wonder, including the Russian president and I, what Misha wants from Ukraine, from Georgia, from the world in general, and from his own self in particular. For those who are terribly interested in his life and career, Wiki offers a huge, comprehensive article about Saakashvili: read it and you will know almost everything about him. And yet, I still have an itch to squiggle a couple of personally felt and fathomed words about his personality, his political animalism, his nonstop drive for power and his unbridled desire to influence the modern world.

In Georgia, incidentally, it is not the done thing to speak and write about the émigré third Georgian president, either positively or negatively, depending on what part of Georgian society is listening to or reading your narrative. Whatever else Saakashvili may be, he is a grandmaster of inciting controversial talk about his personality, the deeds he has committed and the wrongs he has perpetrated. To achieve this unsavory but challenging goal of depicting the Georgian ex-president, I delved into both the domestic and the foreign reading matter, and, behold, the domestic endeavor of creating his psychological portrait was much scanter than the foreign one, although, in general, the world does not seem to be overly curious of his life, thoughts and psyche. I’m not going to throw in all those boring quotes that I have come across; some too boring and some purely undeserving of our attention, but I will use all those epithets I have snatched from the available research into his character, and I will not lie, nor will I exaggerate or make any understatements. None of the following epithets are mine in any way, aside from a couple of harmless journalistic embellishments and flashes: “An impulsive politician with a scale of mistakes under his belt; a genuine cosmopolitan who is unquestionably brilliant, speaking half a dozen languages; has handed Russia a victory it could scarcely have dreamed of; a relentless fighter for his political durability but with no prospect of any meaningful help from his Western allies anymore; loaded with catastrophic blunders in the war-game with Russia; the answers to every question about his political behavior should be found in his own character; passionate and permanently excited; entertaining the patriotic manner of speech, bombastic, impulsive and confrontational, using his suave exterior to hide a burning nationalist pride; having lost his long personal battle with Putin; manifesting the behavior which is utterly narcissistic, paranoid, egocentric and hysterical, showing psychiatric disturbances; nationalist hothead, political ingénue, sometimes naïve, advocating open society, democracy and free market economic; a populist demagogue with a ruthless lust for power whose impetuousness triggered a crisis of Cold War proportions; once Europe's youngest president having once moved his country toward membership of NATO and having embarked on a successful crusade against corruption – at least in watchful western eyes – and having seen Georgia praised globally as a beacon of democracy; raised in a single-parent family, he grew much attached to his mother; he had difficulties in establishing relations with other people of his age and was often treated as outcast or a loner; prone to suspect others of being unfair, insolent and envious, with intentions to humiliate, insult and entrap him; has a persistent tendency to put himself in opposition with the rest of the society and perceive the world around him as a hostile environment; has a tendency to create super ideas; full of vigor, dynamism, restlessness, disregard for rest and fatigue; his emotional manifestations are expressive, intense and theatrical; harbors internal tension and is defensive, negative and jealous towards people who he recognizes as surpassing him in something; suffers pathological ambition, arrogance, a sense of superiority and high opinion about himself; is irrefutably convinced in his own righteousness and personal importance, intolerant towards any form of criticism; intensely desirous of public attention and admiration; lacks empathy, indifferent towards other people’s needs and feelings, perceives the rest of humanity as a faceless applauding crowd”. This epithetic flow of vocabulary, describing Georgia’s erstwhile leader could be continued endlessly – as it seems his watchers are alert and vigil. And if all this is true, then the question pops up: What makes the throngs of his adherents in Ukraine uphold and follow him. Could they really be a ‘faceless applauding crowd’ or simply desperate to change something about their current life?

Nugzar B. Ruhadze