Steady State

How many historical days Saakashvili counts?

May 18th, 2008 by jibs

The closer the elections, the more “historical days” are being proclaimed by the Georgian authorities. Actually, historizing dates is a common trend even outside the elections.

On May 15, UN General Assembly passed a resolution recognizing the right of the Georgian IDPs to return to their homes in Abkhazia. Of the 192 countries in the Assembly, 14 voted for, 11 against and the rest either abstained or didn’t bother to show up for the hearings.

Here is a list of Georgia’s mighty friends:

Albania, Azerbaijan, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Sweden, Ukraine and United States.

here are those who voted against:

Armenia, Belarus, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, India, Iran, Myanmar, Russia, Serbia, Sudan, Syria and Venezuela.

Others who didn’t care to join the resolution: Germany, France, Great Britain, etc. — basically many of the heavyweights. But, regardless of the voting tally, Saakashvili called this resolution a historic one:

“Yesterday the UN General Assembly passed a historical declaration on ethnic cleansing in Abkhazia and on the rights of refugees to return to their homes and receive back their property.”

It is likely the resolution will remain as a mere concept — after all, 14 countries seem to be really bothered by the fate of Georgian IDPs (some of those countries primarily want their refugees to return to their home: Azerbaijan). Yet, there is optimism, where normally would be concern: what is Georgia doing wrong that even on high moral ground as return of the refugees, it is not gaining that much of support?

This April Georgia was refused MAP (Membership Act Plan) to join the NATO, and instead was given a vague promise to be accepted in the “future” through a “communiqué”. Guess what? Saakashvili:

Today is a historical day for us, for our country, for this organization. It is equal to a geo-political revolution… When I first attended the NATO summit four years ago, I could not even dream about it… Now it is no longer about whether; we will become a NATO member soon, much sooner than some skeptics think.”

I always thought that NATO’s close ties with Georgia — monitoring programs, checking the military standards, a lot of $$$ etc. were all directed towards preparing Georgia for membership — but apparently Georgia’s entry was uncertain before this historical communiqué… Can’t help thinking about Turkey who is promised to be accepted into EU for decades now.

Then there was a ceremony of Georgian army switching from Kalashnikovs to M4 carabine assault rifles.

Today is a historical day for the Georgian armed forces. We have started to switch to western weapons. Starting from today, we will use the best weapon in the world – the M4 assault rifle.

Would make a nice day off: The Day when we switched to M4.

There were many more similar historical instances of course. I wonder if the frequency of historical dates is proportional to lowering confidence in the authorities? So many historical dates, and yet…

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