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THE ELECTIONS IN GEORGIA ARE OVER. Summary of the Parliamentary Elections in the Republic of GeorgiaIvlian HAINDRAVA
Ivlian Haindrava, Chairman of the Georgian Republican Party.
On 31 October, 1999, the last parliamentary elections of the departing century were held in Georgia. Of the 235 seats in the one-chamber parliament, 150 are distributed by the proportional system according to the national party lists, and the other 85 among one-mandate districts where elections are held according to the majority system. Only those parties are represented in parliament who have cleared the seven-percent election barrier, and in the majority districts, no less than one third of the votes must be gained to win in the first round. In those districts where none of the candidates received the necessary support, a second round was held on 14 November.
Thirty-three parties and blocks successfully surmounted all the formalities set forth in the Law on Election. This, of course, is rather a lot, but still much fewer than four years ago when 53 parties and blocks featured in the election bulletins under the proportional system. There were also fewer candidates this time willing to compete in the majority districts.
According to the data of the Central Elections Commission, approximately 68% of the voters participated in the elections. The election results under the proportional system were as follows:
The Georgian Citizen Union (GCU)—41.75% (85 mandates);
The Georgia’s Revival block—25.18% (51 mandates);
The Industry Will Save Georgia block—7.08% (14 mandates).
Another three blocks, which failed to clear the seven-percent election barrier, achieved relatively high results:
The Labor Party—6.8%;
The National Democratic Alliance-Third Way—4.6%;
The People’s Party-Didgori block—4.1%.
The other 27 parties and blocks gathered a total of 10% of the votes between them.
Representatives of the ruling party, the GCU, also sustained victory in most of the majority districts, thus assuring themselves a comfortable majority in parliament. In some majority districts, the elections were aborted, and there repeat voting is to be held. But it cannot in any way influence the breakdown of forces in parliament.
For comparison, we will remind you that at the previous parliamentary elections four years ago, the election barrier (at that time the ceiling was set at 5%) was also surmounted by only three parties: the GCU (22.3%), the National Democratic Party (7.8%) and Georgia’s Revival (7.5%). In 1995, the parties and blocks that did not get into parliament on the party lists accounted for almost two thirds of the votes, and in these elections, for approximately one quarter.
The Election TechniqueThe result achieved in one way or another by the ruling party at the last elections could have been called an unqualified victory, were it not for several circumstances I will discuss below. Nevertheless, when a country is in the throes of a severe socioeconomic crisis, in which allocations to the budget systematically do not reach the planned indices, wages and pensions are not paid for months on end, most of the country’s population is dragging out a miserable existence, and corruption in the power structures has reached an unprecedented level, there must be a reason why the ruling party gained significantly more votes than at the previous elections. In this case, the achievements on the foreign policy arena (the OSCE summit in Istanbul is the best confirmation of this) are of no consequence, the half-starving citizen in the street really could not care less whether Georgia is a member of the Council of Europe, or the World Trade Organization, or is participating in the Great Silk Road project, etc.
The GCU must be given its due, its members were well aware that by the elections they had to find something which would force the electorate to vote for the ruling party, no matter what. In such situations, of unfailing support is the image of an external or internal foe. At the previous elections, the role of internal enemy was conferred on the one-time powerful commander of the Mkhedrioni militarized organization, Dzhaba Ioseliani, who is now serving an 11-year prison sentence for complicity in the attempted assassination of Shevardnadze on 25 August, 1995. At the current elections, this illustrious role went to the leader of the Adzhar Autonomous Republic, Aslan Abashidze.
Whether he wanted to or not, Abashidze in turn did all he could to be endowed this role. With every passing year, his arbitrariness was becoming ever more blatant, expanding from one sphere of state life to another. After establishing total control over the financial and economic situation in his region, he has also monopolized the personnel and political spheres, and aware of his power, has started thinking about extending his influence to the whole of Georgia. The elections to the local self-government offices in November 1998 confirmed the encroaching expansion of the Adzhar regime, the Abashidze All-Georgian Union of Democratic Revival gained representation everywhere, and in some regions even formed the majority by drawing temporary and more permanent allies. Abashidze viewed the parliamentary, and then presidential, elections (scheduled for next April) as a legitimate opportunity to strike a serious blow at Shevardnadze on a national Georgian scale. For this purpose, he has mobilized powerful financial resources, accumulated for years by means of extremely dubious transactions in customs, with the Georgian maritime steamship line and other structures, and built up around his party, although an extremely multifarious, at least sufficiently imposing-looking coalition, Georgia’s Revival, which is also called the Batumi Coalition. This gave the GCU what it needed to successfully scare the people.
The relations between Tbilisi and Batumi, which were not particularly good, gained truly psychotic dimensions during the election campaign. Abashidze was the epitome of everything that people had been trying to ignore for years, the absence of the slightest semblance of democracy in Adzharia, the financial over-indulgences, the clan economy, the orientation toward Russia reinforced by demonstrative flirting with the Russian military, and the persecution of the opposition and independent mass media, after all, there was no real need to fantasize here. In turn, the Batumi Coalition gave as good as it got, and the backlash of accusations and compromising material about the Tbilisi leaders (which were often also substantiated) fired passions even more. It is understandable that the Tbilisi power center, which controls a large territory, a large portion of the voters and possesses more propaganda opportunities, was obviously in the better position. The parliamentary elections essentially boiled down to a primitive standoff: everyone who hates Shevardnadze, vote for Abashidze; everyone who is afraid of Abashidze, vote for Shevardnadze. In the end, as it might have been expected, there were more people afraid of Abashidze than who actively hated Shevardnadze. Thus, the election campaign for the parliamentary elections was held as though guided by the presidential elections, which makes it possible to say that the first round of the presidential elections in Georgia has already taken place, and confirmed the experts’ opinion that Shevardnadze will not have any serious opposition next April.
It is worth noting that no sooner were the elections over than the aggression between the two power centers largely evaporated, and now no one recalls the ships from the Georgian maritime steamship line sold for a song, or the tyranny in customs, or the disregard for the laws and Constitution, or the other mutual accusations and insults. After the elections, the agenda immediately switched to questions relating to the distribution of offices in the parliament, as well as in the executive branch, which naturally faces a violent shakeup as the scapegoat for the impoverished situation in the country. “Moor” Abashidze played his part, he scared the ordinary voter to death with his blackness and created the brief, but timely illusion of the GCU’s white cloak.
It is also important that Tbilisi did not even permit the thought of the Batumi Coalition winning the parliamentary majority. President Shevardnadze announced in advance and for all to hear that such an outcome of the elections would have been tantamount to a “parliamentary coup.” A member of western democracy probably has no idea what that means, a “parliamentary coup” as the result of elections. According to this logic, every change in ruling party should be evaluated as a “parliamentary coup,” and everything that happens under the guidance of a “coup” is unacceptable to democracy from the word go. However, ruling parties replace each other with enviable regularity in democratic countries. The thing is that in specific post-Soviet language, which is still rich in the allegories of Soviet times, Shevardnadze was in fact equating Abashidze’s hypothetical victory at the parliamentary elections with a state coup, and as the true guarantor of the Constitution, was promising not to permit this. And finally, Interior Minister Targamadze, whose freedom of rein has gone completely to his head, assured citizens from the television screen that he would “not allow a change in political course.” However, the people paid no attention to this and continued as before to fear Abashidze.
In essence, the harsh election confrontation between Tbilisi and Batumi played into the hands of Abashidze himself, who established his coalition as the main oppositionist force to the Shevardnadze regime. Twenty-five percent of the votes is not a bad intake at all. And although Abashidze did not succeed in extending his power throughout the country, the position of second in power should guarantee him both personal immunity and pretty good prospects for the future in terms of opportunities to compensate for his election expenses. On the eve of the elections, the Tbilisi and Batumi power centers essentially declared war, whereby not so much on each other, as on their own fellow citizens. And they won this war. The average voter, who is capable of distinguishing between only two colors in the entire political spectrum, made a predictable choice, and for the next four years no one will be interested in his opinion. Many felt this the very next day after the elections, when the republic was immersed in darkness (during the election campaign, the electricity crisis was not observed, after all it had been necessary to bombard the electorate’s brains unceasingly with election propaganda), roads stopped being repaired, not to mention the halt in wages and pensions promised on the eve of the elections. On 1 November, Georgia woke up with a new parliament, its old problems, and an election hangover. What can we say, they should not have drunk so much, particularly, the low-grade election swill, which the power lovers so generously poured down the voter’s throat during the election campaign.
It would be appropriate to mention one more winner in the past elections, the Industry Will Save Georgia block. The leader of the block, “beer baron” Goga Topadze, was not stingy with the free offer of his commodity: Kazbegi beer (I have to admit it is not bad) flowed like a river during the election campaign and ultimately ran out in 7.08% of the votes. The beer-lovers campaign turned out to be truly unique. Several big businessmen, who are major non-tax payers; representatives of the Reformer Union, the leader of which is still one of the most virulent anti-reformers, Minister of Agriculture Bakur Gulua; a pair of once famous fighters from the political movement Sporting Georgia (no jokes please!); former ombudsman David Salaridze, he is also a Soviet police general, former deputy of the interior ministry, who also managed to serve as head of the tax service; leader of the self-annulled party New Georgia, consisting primarily of the old nomenklatura; head of the Georgia Above All nationalistic movement Guram Sharadze, and another two or three politicians of various origins who found their calling in saving Georgia by means of its industry which no longer exists, are the possessors of 14 mandates. The election message of this pseudo-political vinaigrette boiled down to the following formula, “we have been able to organize production in our companies, we will be able to organize it on a national level.” On the narrow-minded level, however, this was interpreted approximately as “they are at least well-fed, so they won’t be interested in stealing from the treasury.” However, the “well-fed” have multi-million tax debts to the budget, protectionist intentions in the formation of a domestic market, a negative attitude toward the IMF and other international financial organizations, do not approve of Georgia’s entry into the World Trade Organization...
The powerful presence of businessmen in parliament, along with former policemen and prosecutors, is the subject of a separate discussion. The businessmen are quite evenly distributed among the lists of favorite parties and majority districts, deciding apparently that it does not make sense to give the right to lobby their interests to others, so now they themselves will head the country’s political fate. Regular policemen and prosecutors (there are no less than 25 of them in the newly elected parliament, by the most modest count) seem to have decided that it will not do to let judicial reform take its own course (God forbid it reach their own omnipotent structures), so also strove to become legislators. Co-existence under the same roof (parliamentary) of the new capitalistic sharks and the big fish from the law enforcement sphere can lead to complete merging of their interests and the ultimate elimination from business of people who do not find patrons in time in the upper echelons of power. It is extremely unclear who, in such conditions, will fight corruption.
Now a few words about those who lost the election. Formed just three years ago, the Labor Party achieved great success at the local elections in November 1998, primarily because the leftist propaganda of its leader found a sympathetic ear among the lumpen members of the population. However, as was to be expected, their many promises remained unfulfilled, and those voters easily subordinated to demagogy and quick to protest began looking for something else in which to place their hopes. Incidentally, observers believe that despite the steady drop in their rating during the year, the laborites nevertheless cleared the seven-percent barrier and, according to rights, should have been represented in the parliament. However, the elections in Georgia are a game without rights and the future of the laborites is now extremely nebulous.
Nor could the National Democratic Alliance, which includes the National Democratic and Republican parties, nor the Party of Georgian Industrialists (in practice, the party of medium and small business), get into parliament. The appeal for a “third way,” neither Shevardnadze, nor Abashidze, for bringing domestic policy into harmony with foreign policy, for rightist reforms aimed at stimulating production and creating a healthy competitive environment in economics and finances, and for asymmetrical regionalism as a basis for state and territorial organization, sounded convincing only to one hundred thousand voters. The other potential supporters of the alliance were either too scared by the threat of Abashidze coming to power, or did not leave home at all on election day, despairing of the fact that a team of 20-30 professional politicians who were not mixed up in any machinations and corruption, would not be able, in the event of winning parliamentary mandates, to drastically influence the general atmosphere in the country. According to the data of a public opinion poll, voters were very sorry that the National Democratic Alliance did not get into parliament. Although, as we all know, after the fight there is no point in waving your fists.
The People’s Party, formed on the basis of quite a large group of politicians who deviated from the National Democratic Party in 1996, seems to have become entangled in its own election intrigues. They scurried continuously between Tbilisi and Batumi, trying to bargain the most advantageous conditions for themselves on the threshold of the elections. As a result, they ultimately undermined the GCU’s trust in them, but did not acquire the necessary trust from Abashidze. After becoming a member of the Batumi political alliance, but not finding sympathy in terms of their quota in the joint elections lists, the People’s Party did not join Abashidze’s election block Georgia’s Revival, which ultimately led the voter astray. Understanding that they would not be able to clear the seven-percent barrier on their own, but wishing to keep a good face in a bad situation, at the very last moment, the People’s Party acquired an extremely extravagant partner for themselves in the form of the destitute “zviadist” organization Didgori. However, the “morganatic marriage” with old political enemies did not bring the People’s Party any significant number of votes, and, in the end, it brought up the rear of the six leaders.
There is nothing much to say about the rest. It can only be noted that the past elections laid to rest the phenomenon of orthodox communism in Georgia once and for all. The Communist-Stalinist and Council of Workers block gathered 1.3% of the votes, and the “zviadists,” the doomed advocates of Gamsakhurdia, wandered off to join various other blocks. Their most influential organization, Round Table-Free Georgia, which decided to take independent part in the elections, gathered only one quarter of a percent of the votes. “Re-dyed” communists, incidentally, are in abundance; those originating from a once united nomenklatura adorned the election lists of both power centers, Tbilisi and Batumi.
On the Question of ProcedureAs we know, elections begin long before voting day and even before the official beginning of the election campaign. Incidentally, I am limiting myself only to general observations during the course of the election campaign, voting procedures, and tallying up of votes.
Pursuant to Georgian law, all parties and blocks participating in the elections are given equal and free time on the only national television channel, the first channel of state television. And in fact, for 25 days three-hour programs were shown on the first channel with speeches by the leaders of the political organizations. But, first, these programs were not shown during prime time, and second, it was essentially impossible to figure out who was talking facts, and who utter nonsense. Of the 33 parties and blocks, three quarters were pseudo-political fly-by-night organizations, the representative of which created a completely inappropriate background for television election propaganda. All the other air time was filled with direct and indirect advertisement of the ruling party. For example, under the guise of news, two-hour meetings were broadcast between the Georgian President and the workers of various regions of the country (Shevardnadze must be given his due, he was extremely active), programs on the trips of the parliament speaker, state minister, and other high-ranking officials to various cities and villages, which were in fact the cream of the election propaganda. The time given to video advertisement of the GCU exceeded the time given to all the other parties and blocks put together. A similar picture could be seen on the commercial television stations, where two factors proved decisive: the essentially unlimited financial opportunities of the ruling party, and the lack of desire of the owners of private television companies to spoil their relationship with the powers that be. If the number of minutes given to advertisement of the GCU is multiplied by the official cost of these same advertising minutes on television, we get a sum which exceeds many times the sum a party has the right to spend on election propaganda envisaged by the law. And then there were also the posters which the ruling party with enviable regularity pasted over the propaganda material of all its rivals, and the billboards of various sizes which the GCU scattered all over the capital and other major cities of the country. Moreover, the house-to-house canvassers had to be paid in cash, as well as the members of the election commissions for the “quick wits” they manifested during the drawing up of voters’ lists and their “dedication” during the tallying of votes and the compiling of election reports. Thus, the ruling party, the GCU, obtained a complete carte blanche for conducting its election campaign.
The most serious direct violations involved the lists of voters. The general census scheduled for May-June 1999 was canceled by the authorities precisely to ensure, as many observers believe, that there were no reliable data about the number of voters. This made it possible to include a countless number of “dead souls” on the voters’ lists. The “extra” bulletins formed in this way ended up in the voting urns, whereby the overwhelming majority of “dead souls” “voted” for the supporters of the ruling party. In precisely the same way, people in preliminary investigation prisons, servicemen voting at “closed polling stations,” essentially inaccessible to observers, patients in various clinics, including mental asylums, also proved to be supporters of the ruling party. On election day, so-called “mobile groups” were also in operation, one and the same person occasionally figured on the voters’ lists at different voting stations and, correspondingly, voted several times. In one of the election districts of Tbilisi, 15,000 bulletins disappeared without a trace, whereby without any action whatsoever taken against those responsible. As a result of all these manipulations, the number of voters participating in the elections proved artificially high; according to local experts, about one million nine hundred thousand voters actually voted, but according to the data of the Central Elections Commission, this number reached to more than two million one hundred thousand citizens.
The list of all the violations is endless, a detailed analysis of the election epopee in Georgia could well extend to a monograph with the provisional title of “How Not to Hold Elections.” I will note again that in accordance with the law, which was “repaired” immediately before the elections by the parliamentary majority of the GCU, the ruling party obtained a majority in the election commissions of every level. And all controversial questions in the commissions are resolved by the majority of votes. Moreover, violation complaints during the voting procedure could only be submitted on election day and only until 8 p.m., i.e. until the polling stations closed. Thus, violations during vote tallying could not even be appealed against in theory.
The pressure put on the voters (which assumed the form of open scare tactics) by the police, local government agencies, and all kinds of “authorities” exceeded all conceivable bounds. To give a complete picture, I will present, without any editing, two short reports from a reputable information agency Prime News, distributed on the day of the second election round in majority districts.
TBILISI, 14 November (Prime News)—In the Martvili region in western Georgia, the repeat elections for parliamentary deputies scheduled for Sunday did not take place. Two weeks ago, on 31 October, the parliamentary elections in this region in the one-mandate election districts were essentially thwarted due to numerous violations of the voting procedure, and repeat elections were scheduled. As the press service of the Georgian Central Elections Commission told Prime News, this time the reason for the failure of the repeat elections was that not one chairman of the polling station commissions came to the district election commission on Sunday morning to pick up the election bulletins. Member of the Georgian Central Elections Commission Hatuna Gogorishvili thinks that the chairmen of the polling station commissions in Martvili were simply too scared.
Voting should have taken place in the Martvili region at 34 polling stations, and the voters were to have made a choice between two candidates of the majority district—former Georgian Communications and Postal Minister Fridon Indzhia, who was balloting for the Labor Party, and a candidate from the Georgian Citizen Union, Soso Gadelia.
TBILISI, 14 November (Prime News)—Enraged by the actions of a special assignment team from the capital’s police force, which drove back voters who came to the polling stations in the Nadzaladev region to participate in the second round of the parliamentary elections, the residents of this Tbilisi district stopped the traffic on the Tsotne Dadiani Avenue on Sunday evening. According to the results of the voting under the majority system held on 31 October in this region, independent candidate Merab Samadashvili and representative of the ruling party Georgian Citizen Union, Gela Nioradze, made it to the second round... As in the election headquarters of the independent candidate told Prime News, members of a special assignment crew blocked polling stations at around 5 p.m. in which Merab Samadashvili was leading, beat up members of the polling station commission, and essentially took the polling stations by storm.
It is worth noting that all of this took place during the second election round in majority districts, i.e. already after the GCU had ensured itself the majority in parliament.
The authoritative and well-experienced non-government organization Fair Elections, which monitored essentially all the polling stations in the country, said that “the elections were not fair.” In contrast to this opinion, the mission of OSCE observers noted that, despite isolated violations, which did not influence the final results, the elections in Georgia were on the whole another step along the path to democracy in the country.
The fact that this opinion obviously does not correspond to reality can be explained, apparently, by two main reasons. First, the OSCE mission mainly consisted of observers from western countries who, because of their life experience, just cannot fathom what may go on during elections in countries like Georgia. As an observer, I encountered a similar situation during the parliamentary elections in one of the post-Soviet countries, when some of my colleagues from Western Europe could not even imagine how election results could be so totally and unceremoniously manipulated. Second, the observers from the OSCE and several other international organizations were usually placed under great pressure by the political situation. That is, if the West believes that preserving Shevardnadze’s power in Georgia meets its (the West’s) interests, election results, which do not cast any doubt on this power, are welcomed.
There is perhaps a certain pragmatic rationale in this approach, stability and consistency of policy is more important than democracy, but we cannot ignore its obvious negative aspects. The voter, who becomes a witness to systematic and flagrant election violations, can at any stage and wherever he may turn have the conclusion of the most influential international organization pushed under his nose, stating that everything took place within the bounds of decency. Moreover, what can be expected of such a voter in the future, apart from complete indifference and growing cynicism toward both the elections themselves and the international organizations hired to “observe” them, who behave according to a double standard? And for the falsifiers of the election results, this is a direct stimulus to engage in even more insolent behavior in the future, of which we are becoming the witnesses in Georgia, where every subsequent election is the next stage in sophisticating the technique of falsification and manipulation of voter lists, bulletins, figures...
The weekly electronic bulletin No. 149 put out by the international agency STINA published information by P. Shustrova from the Czech Republic, who was at the parliamentary elections in Georgia as an independent international observer. This is what she writes, “So why are the OSCE observers saying that the elections in Georgia were a step forward? Michael Ox, who has observed many elections as a representative of the OSCE, shed some light on the situation for us... Even before the beginning of the elections, he told us that there would be manipulation, but that the situation was better in Georgia than in Kazakhstan. Of course, he is right, but it seems to me that the honesty and fairness of the elections in Georgia should be evaluated only from the point of view of how this procedure corresponds to Georgian legislation. The United States welcomed Shevardnadze’s victory. This is understandable, since his striving toward Europe is certainly more in tune with the contemporary world than Aslan Abashidze’s orientation toward Russia, fraught with additional problems for the region, which is unsettled anyway. But what about the Georgian citizens? What about the voters who saw the falsification with their own eyes and are now being told that ‘isolated violations’ did not influence the results? In the final analysis, democracy in the country is not created by Shevardnadze or any other prominent politician, but by the people’s participation in public affairs; many Georgian citizens, however, feel deceived and betrayed for the sake of ‘supreme political interests.’ And another important fact, according to all the international standards, Georgia is an extremely corrupted country, and we all know that without a change in the elite it is unlikely to advance to the level of a legal state.”
In the final analysis, even the OSCE mission became perceptibly embarrassed about their inspiriting remarks, and a statement published the day after the second election round in the majority districts, already mentions “serious violations” at 24 polling stations. It is also emphasized that the vote tallying during the first round left something to be desired, and that of the 19 members of the Central Elections Commission only 12 signed the final report.
Various political organizations reacted differently to these circumstances. The Industry Will Save Georgia block, which thanks to the Central Elections Commission was kept on tenterhooks for almost a week (on the third day after the elections, the Central Elections Commission stopped publishing preliminary information about the results, having frozen the industrialists ready to save Georgia on the very verge of the seven-percent barrier), caused more fuss than anyone at first. But, after the decision was made “at the top” to allow this block into parliament and the Central Elections Commission published an index of 7.08%, the members of this block calmed down, obviously having decided that in this situation they should accept those 14 mandates superciliously thrown their way. Whether or not the ruling party was behind this deal, and if so, what it expects from this block, only time will tell.
The Labor Party which, according to the Central Elections Commission, was also in the immediate vicinity of the seven-percent barrier, protested loudly, claiming quite legitimately that it had been artificially deprived of some of the votes it had won. The laborites even managed to win back four thousand votes from the Central Elections Commission in the Supreme Court, but this proved insufficient. And the Supreme Court was not willing to give any more. The laborites are now threatening to take the matter as far as the court in Strasbourg, but it will take too much time to get there and back.
The national democratic alliance, Third Way, just like the laborites, did not sign the final report in the Central Elections Commission. But it had other motives. Third Way published a statement in which they protested against the atmosphere of coercion during the elections, and the numerous manipulations which led to falsification of the results, emphasizing in so doing that they saw the main reason for their own failure in the fact that they did not gather the planned number of votes. The national democratic alliance called on Georgia’s political forces, non-government organizations, representatives of the independent press, and the country’s citizens to think seriously about where intentional distortion of the people’s voting freedom was taking them and to join efforts to correct the situation.
The People’s Party, after acquainting themselves with the preliminary results of the elections, could not think of anything better to do than send their leader to Batumi, to Aslan Abashidze’s camp, in the hopes of begging a few tens of thousands of votes they were lacking from him. Regretfully, Abashidze was not in the position to afford such generosity.
Abashidze and his coalition were quite restrained in their criticism of the ruling party for what they had done at the elections, understanding, first, that they themselves were under the barrel (96% of the votes in Adzharia were achieved by unfair methods, and they had local deals with the GCU to distribute illegal bulletins), and second, he did not wish to aggravate the situation before distribution of the parliamentary offices.
The other 26 parties and blocks, with their tenths and hundredths of a percent, had nothing to say in the matter, and no one would have listened to them anyway.
What Do We Have?In a recent article, prestigious Georgian political scientist Gia Nodia said: Tbilisi’s semi-democracy triumphed over Batumi’s dictatorship, but does this not mean there will be “Batumization” of the Tbilisi regime? The question is legitimate, since essentially one-party rule for another four years, slightly camouflaged to look like a pluralistic parliamentary tribune, does not bode particularly well. Moreover, we should take into account that “Tbilisi’s semi-democracy” is rapidly subsiding and just as rapidly approaching “Batumi’s dictatorship” the further it gets from the capital. The local administrative and police tyranny, which was fully demonstrated on 31 October and 14 November, together with the fact that most of the population is extremely far from changing the lifestyle and way of thinking inherent of the Soviet period, is creating prerequisites for a model of development in Georgia which is more characteristic of several Latin American countries than of European states.
Let us take another look from this point of view at the new composition of the parliament. A largely corrupted political elite, mixed with big business directly participating in the corruption (it is essentially impossible to do big business any other way in Georgia), plus those from the so-called “law enforcement structures,” who semi-openly patronize corruption, does this not look on the whole like a typical oligarchy? Of course, “local battles” will continue within this oligarchy for the expansion and redistribution of spheres of influence; and of course, interests between the central and regional mafia will clash; but all of this will take place within those rules of the game which they set themselves, and be strictly off-limits to any outsiders. The presence of the young reformers’ wing of the GCU in this campaign headed by parliament speaker Zurab Zhvania is unlikely to be a serious obstacle to the final formation of the above-mentioned oligarchy. This is for the following reasons. First, everything accomplished by this wing during the elections resulted from such serious moral (and legal!) compromises that the honesty of this team simply does not bear mentioning. Zurab Zhvania personally headed the GCU election headquarters, and the second leader of this group, “father of judicial reform” and chairman of the GCU parliamentary fraction, Mikhail Saakashvili, contrived to say that the police action during the elections was “quite an achievement.” This is clear evidence of the authorities’ corruption. Second, even if we admit that this team still has the enthusiasm of the young reformers, their numbers in no way suffice to pass truly reformist decisions through the parliament, not to mention putting these decisions into practice by the executive power branch. During the election campaign, the GCU leadership constantly emphasized the fact that the party lists were renewed by 60%, and that there were many new faces and names on them. On the one hand, this is a recognition that 60% of the representatives of the ruling party in the previous parliament were totally unsatisfactory, and on the other, where is the guarantee that under the GCU’s principles for compiling election lists, the “new” will turn out better than the “old.” Particularly since really new faces, on whom certain hopes could be placed, are much fewer than the well-forgotten, or even not entirely forgotten old faces. Finally, the past elections served as a catalyst in the further alienation of the authorities from the people, and, what is most alarming, have aroused not only disappointment, but even a certain bewilderment in that extremely small part of society capable of thinking critically and which has maintained its hopes in the possibility of achieving democracy and building a civilian society. At present, the most pluralistic and transparent power agency, the parliament, has lost its bearings; it appears there are no reliable partners, with whom to successfully cooperate in this direction.
In this respect, I give myself the liberty to present a quote from my own article published in July 1998 in the Georgian newspaper 7 Dnei: “More than appears at first glance today depends on the small democratic percentage of the parliament, on its choice and behavior. If Zhvania-Saakashvili fight and triumph, everything will be fine; if they fight, suffer defeat, but avoid the unacceptable, they will retain the possibility of victory in the future; if they take the path of amoral compromise with the unacceptable, they will get to the elections, but will be faced with the need either to merge with the unacceptable, or simply be swept from the path.” Unfortunately, I can now say that events developed according the scenario “merging with the unacceptable.”
On the whole, what happened during the parliamentary elections confirmed the presupposition that Georgia’s democratic resources are extremely limited, and what is more, the democratic forces have not done their utmost even within their limited possibilities. Primarily, this relates to the non-government organizations, some of which have allowed themselves to be used to instigate the hysteria around the choice between the bad and the worse. Others have gone even further and openly taken the side of the bad. Still others have restricted themselves to the role of bystander-experts, they waited for the results of the elections and in retrospect said and wrote that they thought about the outrageous doings fraught with the most unfortunate consequences. After all, the non-government organizations have pretty good intellectual forces which should have realized that, by permitting the bad in advance to use any methods for triumphing over the worse, they were only assisting the above-mentioned “Batumization” of the Tbilisi regime. This is unforgivable, since, I repeat, there were no realistic prerequisites for victory of the “Batumi coalition” over the GCU.
The role of the mass media was partially discussed above. The elections graphically showed that the number of truly independent mass media in Georgia can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Newspapers, including the venal press, are incapable of having any effective influence on public opinion due to their laughably small circulation. The same can be said of most of the commercial television channels, the transmission of which is limited to small areas. Some mass media made a great deal of money on the election campaign. Of course, there is nothing wrong in trying to earn money within the realms of the law, but when freedom of speech in the country is not a centuries-long and inviolable tradition, it is worth thinking about how unscrupulousness could turn into lost opportunities to earn money in the future. Not to mention the threat of losing the existing level of freedom and moral principles.
Criticism of the embryos of a civilian society, non-government organizations, and the more or less independent media, may seem irrelevant to some people; let everyone do their own thing, be they politicians, non-government organizations, or journalists. The matter, however, is that in post-totalitarian countries where the irreversibility of democratic development is still in question, retrogrades are no less active and, as a rule, much more consolidated than representatives of the nascent progressive forces. Therefore, much too precise “delimitation of powers” and distancing among the participants of the democratic process are fraught with weakening this process as a whole and with the defeat of each of them individually in their spheres of activity.
Incidentally, the current situation sufficiently reflects the state of society, or to be more precise, the proto-society, for in a country where there is essentially no middle class, there is no need to talk about society, public opinion, and conscious and responsible choice. Therefore, it may even be legitimate that the western observers contented themselves with the fact that, as they maintained, the elections in Georgia are going better than in any of the other post-Soviet republics. Although, if they genuinely want the good of the people in this country, it would be more appropriate to ask why the elections in Georgia are going worse than in Bulgaria, for example. In the final analysis, the people should want their own good, and not merely want it in abstract terms, but also do something to achieve it. And think, at least once every four years.
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