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International Conference
«Conflicts in the Caucasus: History, the Present and Prospects for Resolution»
Baku (Azerbaijan) 22-23 October, 2012 and Tbilisi (Georgia) 25-26 October, 2012
POLITICS
Giya ZHORZHOLIANI
Giya Zhorzholiani, Ph.D. (Hist.), associated professor at Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (Tbilisi, Georgia)
Georgia is living through the third stage of its post-Soviet political history. Its first democratically elected president personified the very idea of national independence and devoted the country’s entire policy to it. However, President Gamsakhurdia’s authoritarian bias aimed at centralizing and monopolizing power produced unexpected results. Groups within the ruling elite became locked in a power struggle and society split, while the opposition grew more and more radical. This and certain external factors led to the tragic events of late 1991-early 1992 when the president was deposed in an undemocratic way.
Eduard Shevardnadze, who came to power as the country’s second president, announced that democracy would be the beginning and end of his domestic policies. The chosen means and methods, however, did not correspond to the aim. The system he was busy creating kept society (the nation) away from politics and from building up democratic institutions: everything was done by a narrow circle of politicians who played by their own quasi-democratic rules. Sham democracy undermined the state institutions and worsened the people’s social, economic, and legal situation. While gradually losing support at home, the regime fell victim to the democratic rules it had created itself. Several members of the ruling Union of Georgian Citizens Party, which was headed by Mikhail Saakashvili and moved onto the side of the opposition during Shevardnadze’s last presidential term, appealed to the nation pushed into the background by the ruling regime and forced the president to resign.
For the second time, the regime change was disguised as democracy. Mikhail Saakashvili, who became president on the crest of the Rose Revolution and who later consolidated his position through constitutional amendments and support of the almost one-party qualified majority of the parliament, spent his first year fighting corruption and recovering the money stolen by the top figures of the previous regime.
The nation spent the first post-revolutionary year waiting for changes for the better; the authorities were busy looking for new ideas and new people, working on the development vector, and putting together a team. By 2005, the new leaders had already identified the trends and started implementing a project which can be described as the Revolutionary Democracy Project: democracy was the declared aim while the methods remained revolutionary.
The President, His Cabinet, and His Parliament
On 3 February, Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania died a tragic death. His post went to Finance Minister Zurab Nogaideli, the late premier’s old friend without political ambitions. The president began increasingly concentrating all power in his hands. This is rooted in the Soviet past and the constitutional system of power. In the wake of the Rose Revolution, the Constitution was amended to give the new president even more power than before: he acquired the right to disband the parliament, which obviously undermined the latter’s role and influence. It was thought that executive power would be redistributed between the Cabinet of Ministers headed by Zurab Zhvania, one of the most influential political figures of the last decade and a leader of the Rose Revolution, and the president. As premier, Mr. Zhvania did try to bolster the Cabinet with more power by appointing the right people to the right places, but failed: by late 2004, his people filled posts of secondary importance in the government. After his death, the post he filled lost its political significance and the executive branches became accountable to the president.
The parliamentary majority became another of his instruments. The present parliament was formed in a very special way: 75 seats were given to the deputies elected on 2 November, 2003 in the majority constituencies (having annulled the results of the parliamentary election by party lists, the Supreme Court and the revolutionary government spared the results in the majority constituencies); 150 seats were filled after the parliamentary election by party lists held in March 2004. The presidential majority comprises more than 80 percent and includes deputies from both groups. The opposition is represented by two small factions: the Right Opposition (the only opposition structure that overcame the 7 percent barrier in March 2004) and the Democratic Front (created in the fall of 2005 by the deputies of the Republican and the Conservative parties which left the majority in 2004). Together they are still unable to stand against the National Movement ruling party, therefore all drafts and decisions initiated by the executive structures are passed without a murmur. No wonder the parliament passed several hundreds of new laws and amendments to the old laws to support the president’s course.
Influential Personalities and Groups
By 2005, it became clear which groups around the president had more power. These are informal groups, the degree and spheres of political influence of which have nothing in common with the Constitution. Indeed, the real leader of the parliamentary majority is not Maia Nadiradze, its official head, but Giga Bokeria, who represents an influential group of the Freedom Institute. Several cabinet members (Defense Minister Okruashvili, Foreign Minister Bezhuashvili, Minister of Internal Affairs Merabishvili, and Minister of Science and Education Lomaia) wield more political power than the premier.
The traditions of the Shevardnadze era have changed a lot. During his time, the Security Council was probably the most influential executive structure. To be more exact, it was Mr. Shevardnadze himself who set up the Council when he was still the parliament speaker and staffed it with his comrades-in-arms of communist times. He used it to balance and then to cut down the government’s power headed by premier Sigua and the paramilitary groups under Kitovani and Ioseliani he inherited from the Gamsakhurdia regime. Under the 1995 Constitution, the SC acquired broad powers.
President Saakashvili appointed Vano Merabishvili secretary of the Security Council. At that time, the Council tried not only to influence the power structures, the Ministry of Internal Affairs headed by Zhvania’s appointee Georgy Baramidze in particular, but also to control them. Very soon Merabishvili was placed at the head of the united Ministry of Security and Internal Affairs; Okruashvili became Defense Minister, while Bezhuashvili, former defense minister, another loyal supporter of the president, was made the SC secretary. In other words, Zhvania’s people in all the power structures were replaced with the president’s loyal supporters.
The Security Council lost its function of coordinating the power structures all headed by President Saakashvili’s closest friends and supporters. Instead, it was entrusted with the country’s security issues: relations with Russia, including Russia’s bases in Georgia in particular, and the conflict zones. When Foreign Minister Salome Zurabishvili resigned from her post, the president gained control over the Foreign Ministry as well. Today, the president controls all the power structures and the Foreign Ministry, which means that the Security Council has already lost its functions and importance.
The above-mentioned Freedom Institute group has consolidated its position in the parliament and in other spheres of state and public policy. It is mainly involved in education, the judiciary, and the media, it completely controls the ombudsman’s office and exercises general ideological supervision. This group has already removed Minister of Justice Kemularia, who until recently was regarded as a potential premier. It has no influence, however, on the power structures personally controlled by the president.
Alexander Lomaia, who in the past and on the eve of the revolution actively cooperated with the Freedom Institute group, remains very close to it. The group and Lomaia, who first represented the Democracy Foundation and later was Director of the Soros Foundation, set up the Kmara revolutionary youth movement. The group established independent contacts with American political circles, which is causing tension between it and Saakashvili’s other supporters.
Kakha Bendukidze, former minister of economics and currently a minister without portfolio, has preserved his influence. He is in charge of the main economic trends, intensive privatization, and narrowing down the sphere of state responsibility. There is the opinion that the United States is quite satisfied with a situation where influence in Georgia is split between it (political influence) and Russia (economic influence). This explains, in particular, the presence of Mr. Bendukidze in the cabinet: he is actively attracting Russian money and promotes privatization of property in Georgia.
From the Party in Power to the Opposition
The National Movement Party emerged as a revolutionary structure resolved to introduce radical changes and remove the regime. In 2002, it was the slogan “Georgia without Shevardnadze” that ensured its victory in the elections to the Tbilisi City Council. This deprived most party activists of their habitual field of action: the format of revolutionary activity is much wider than the format of power functioning. In 2005, it was reported that in some places party members were moving onto the opposition’s side. It was not a mass movement, but it was very typical of the revolutionary political structures.
The Path Dependence concept very popular among those who study contemporary institutions1 can be used to explain the role and functions of the political parties in Georgia today. As a rule, traditional European organizations are identified by their social support and the interests they represent, their place and efficiency being determined by the number of members and contacts with social groups. The Soviet interpretation of the party as the “vanguard of society,” the guiding force which leads the nation to progress, is still very strong in Georgia’s political mentality.
Obviously, no political party can play with any success by the Soviet party-state rules in Georgia today: it is not completely democratic, but nor is it totalitarian. While losing their places and role in their home parties, some active revolutionaries find an opportunity to use their accumulated revolutionary experience in other opposition groups. The ruling party seems to be indifferent to this. To a certain extent, this trickle is helping to relieve inner-party tension.
It was not only the active members, but also the masses supporting them who began demonstrating opposition sentiments. Sociological polls registered diminishing confidence in the country’s leaders and the ruling party.2 While the year 2004 was a year of hope and struggle against the corrupt bureaucrats of the past, who were expected to return the plundered wealth to the state, in 2005 people expected their lives would take a turn for the better. This was particularly true of impoverished people who, in their despondency, trusted the revolution and its populist slogans. Later these people started piling the guilt for everything, even objective difficulties, on the rulers; they obviously chose the well-trodden path of protest leading to the opposition ranks.
Will the Opposition Unite?
The experience of post-Soviet Georgia has demonstrated that the government’s strength and influence is primarily determined by its access to the administrative resources, which allows it to control the money and nearly all the media. As distinct from the Shevardnadze regime, when the center had no control over part of the administrative resource (the Abashidze regime in Ajaria, the Tbilisi City Council, etc.), in 2004 and especially in 2005, the National Movement showed everyone that it would not accept this state of affairs. Today, when the ruling party has claimed the right to express the will of the nation, the opposition forces cannot do much in the structures of power. This brings to mind the Gamsakhurdia regime, when the opposition and the government could not work together, and when groups of former supporters were leaving the president’s party, while the circle in control of the administrative resources was shrinking. Monopolization and centralization of power weakens the opposition to a certain extent; it deprives it of access to the administrative resources (this happened in 2004) and makes it more radical. Barred from official politics, the opposition is forced to look for new forms and trends.
In 2005, the opposition concentrated on two major trends: first, cooperation and joint efforts among its various structures and, second, searching for ways to increase their representation and establishing closer contacts with the public. A Democratic Front faction was formed in the parliament; and in some of the majority constituencies, the opposition united for the parliamentary election. The Democratic Front was made up of deputies active in the Rose Revolution and elected to parliament by the National Movement lists. Some of them, who were members of the Republican Party (chairman David Usupashvili), revealed their opposition sentiments soon after the election. There were too few of them though to form a parliamentary faction (this required 10 deputies). The faction’s other part was made of deputies of the United National Forces Party headed by Zviad Dzidziguri and Koba Davitashvili, one of the founders of the National Movement. After beginning as a small opposition group in the parliament as early as in 2004, they set up the Conservative Party of Georgia in the summer of 2005. In November of the same year, the groups united to form a faction headed by David Zurabishvili, who also left the parliamentary majority. At the same time, the Right Opposition faction, which stood alone, stepped up its oppositional activities within the parliament and outside it. The faction consisted of two parties—the New Rights (Chairman David Gamkrelidze) and the Industrialists (Zurab Tkemaladze). The Right Opposition was also involved in joint opposition activities during the midterm elections.
Their united efforts and cooperation with some of the non-parliamentary political structures—the Labor Party headed by Shalva Natelashvili and the Freedom Party headed by Konstantin (Koko) Gamsakhurdia, son of the former president—did not help. The National Movement won in all five constituencies.
In an effort to invite wider public circles to participate in political activities, a new public and political organization, the Popular Forum, was set up with the participation of the Traditionalists’ Party and several prominent public figures and public organizations. Together with nearly all the opposition parties, this new structure suggested that the question of direct election of the mayor of Tbilisi be brought up at a national referendum. In the past, the country’s president appointed the mayor of the Georgian capital; the laws adopted at the end of 2005 envisaged that the mayor of Tbilisi should be elected by the City Council. The government, as represented by the Central Election Commission, declined the initiative, but the initiators started gathering the signatures needed to place a legislative initiative in the name of the public in the parliament and present a petition from the public to the president.
On the whole, the opposition is growing increasingly aware that if it wants to become a real alternative to the ruling party, it must pool its efforts to become completely involved in the political process.
The Minister Resigns to Plunge into Public Activities
Seeking even greater goodwill from the West, the post-revolutionary leaders appointed Salome Zurabishvili (a French diplomat of Georgian extraction who served as Ambassador of France to Georgia) as foreign minister of Georgia. Soon after that, tension and strained relationships between the newly appointed minister and the leading circles in the parliament and other structures began to show. This can be explained by the specific and highly centralized system of power in Georgia dominated by informal, rather than formal hierarchic structures. They hinge on a blend of clientele relationships and democratic centralism of the Soviet type. In other words, appointing someone from a different context independent of the ruling party and its ideological and organizational leaders as the head of a key ministry did not fit the system. She had no political past associated with the revolutionary government and the Georgian political circles: her appointment was obviously not only a decision of the Georgian government.
After resigning from the government, Salome Zurabishvili announced that she would start another opposition movement.
The Most Important Events of the Year
Farewell to (Russian) Arms!
The document signed on 30 May by the foreign ministers of Georgia and Russia which started the withdrawal of the Russian military bases from Georgia was the most important military-political event of the year. The process started on 14 August when Russian amphibious ships removed a large batch of military equipment of the group of Russian troops in the Transcaucasus from the Gonio testing ground in Ajaria. The Russian military units are to leave Georgian territory before 2009.
Georgia started the Individual Partnership Action Plan (IPAP) with NATO. Despite certain problems, the NATO leaders have positively assessed the process.
The plan of peace settlement in the Tskhinvali Region (part of the former South Ossetian Autonomous Region) offered by Tbilisi was another important event. It was presented in the U.N. and the EU and approved by many of the international organizations and Western leaders. Very soon, however, de facto leader of the conflict territory Kokoyty offered a settlement plan of his own. In spite of certain similarities (one of which was the demilitarization priority), it was a declaration and a propaganda effort. Tension remains high—no real shifts were achieved.
Defense spending is a rapidly growing part of Georgia’s post-revolutionary budget. In 2005, 390 million lari (about $200 million), or about 15 percent of the budget, were allocated to be spent on better living conditions for the military, weapons and ammunition, and military exercises. Despite the nearly ten-fold increase in military spending compared to the pre-revolutionary period, this has done little to improve the army’s fighting efficiency. The country needs a clear conception of the development of its armed forces, since the security conception offered by the parliament failed to fill the bill.
Holiday on Bush Street
On 10 May, 2005, President George W. Bush visited Georgia; the country’s leaders and most of the public interpreted this event as a landmark in Georgian history. This visit told the world that the international progressive-minded community recognized that Georgia and its leaders had scored great victories in democratic development. The country came to be seen as the vanguard of democratic movement not only across the post-Soviet expanse, but also in the Greater Middle East. Soon after the visit, one of Tbilisi’s main streets was named after the American president.
Throughout 2005, President Saakashvili offered several initiatives designed to strengthen the country’s position in the international democratic movement: the Borzhomi Declaration of the presidents of Ukraine and Georgia; the (failed) efforts to revive GUUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Moldova); and intensified contacts with the Baltic and East European countries. International organizations and the West, the United States in particular, enthusiastically hailed these efforts. Two American senators (Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican John McCain) nominated the presidents of Ukraine and Georgia for the Nobel Prize.
While being extremely engrossed with its democratic image abroad, Georgia, like certain other post-communist states, paradoxically contradicted the fundamentals of democracy at home. It is no longer paying attention to the very meaning of democracy as a method (amply described in his time by J. Schumpeter, one of the most profound theoreticians of democracy).3 Today, the bald regulatory aspect has moved to the fore and assumed the form of an ideology which mobilizes all sorts of political forces and groups. The international cooperation of some of them brings to mind the tactics of the notorious revolutionary internationalists of the past.
Uniform National Exam, Reform of Education and Science
The law adopted late in 2004 triggered reform of the higher education system undertaken to bring organizational and education aspects into harmony with the Bologna Process. This was to be achieved during a transition period of two years, during which time the autonomy of universities and other higher educational establishments was to be significantly reduced and the Ministry of Education and Science was to be entrusted with decision-making. The ministry headed by Alexander Lomaia shouldered this responsibility without hesitation and immediately plunged into action. In several months, the presidents of the leading state universities were replaced with people proposed by the minister and endorsed by the president. The activities of academic councils were suspended and university departments were reorganized. At Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, for example, 22 departments were merged into six. The lecturers and professors were of two minds about the changes, although on the whole they criticized them. The ministry, meanwhile, went on with the project.
The uniform national graduation exam held in July was described as the reformers’ main achievement; the country’s leaders announced that it put an end to the recent decades of corruption at entrance exams. However, both this statement and the methodology (the larger part of which was ready before the Rose Revolution) were severely criticized in the higher educational establishments and the media. There was a lot of displeasure about the dramatic drop in the number of freshmen (from 33,000 to 17,000, only 25 percent of whom were paid for from the budget).
The style and methods of the revolutionary leaders betrayed themselves in this sphere and in science as a whole. Indeed, social tension increased when the number of students and university lecturers was cut down for the alleged purpose of improving the quality of education (which should be done). These steps planted doubts in people’s minds about the availability of higher education in Georgia for one and all.
The Ministry of Education and Science scored another “victory” on the second front: late in December it reigned victorious in its confrontation with the Academy of Sciences of Georgia, when the parliament passed a law under which academic institutes, by acquiring the status of legal entities of public law, dropped their membership in the Academy of Sciences and became subordinated to the ministry. In this way, the ministry, by ignoring all the suggestions and arguments proposed by the academic community through the press, petitions, mass rallies, etc., destroyed the system of science which has taken decades to complete for the sake of a new and still unclear system. The academic community, probably the most precious resource of a country not rich in natural resources, has been divorced from decision-making.
Revolution does not recognize evolution…
1 See: B. Guy Peters, Institutional Theory in Political Science. The “New Institutionalism,” Continuum, London, 2001; D.C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance, CUP, Cambridge, 1990. Back to text
2 Available at [http://www.gorbi.com/store/en/20051222_183415.pdf]; Public Opinion Research, October/November 2005 [http://www.iri.org.ge/eng/engmain.htm]. Back to text
3 See: J. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 2nd ed., Harper, New York, 1947. Back to text
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