The hunger strike which lasted for 17 days in front of the Georgian Parliament was called off by the opposition on March 25th without any political concessions from the ruling party.
The opposition stopped hunger strike after Patriarch for the second time called on the conflicting sides to reach a compromise. Although no agreement was reached with the ruling party, the opposition disbanded albeit their promises to carry on “till the end”.
It is hard to predict whether the oppositions’ ratings will fall due to their inability to score major victories. Ever since the presidential elections this January, the opposition has been actively seeking to win ground. Despite holding numerous protests, publishing memorandums and fist wagging, they have not achieved any of their major goals.
One of their more “successful” scores has been to push the authorities to reform the Public Broadcaster, which in past was under the government’s influence. Although a compromise was reached to de-politicize the television, the process and procedures put in place to make this happen would make even the EU bureaucrats scratch their heads.
What started off as a call to remove the general director of the television, ended up in complex negotiations, elections of board members and separate elections of the new general director. All in all, the new team should be in place for April 4th — about 3 months after the compromise was reached to reform the Public Broadcaster.
In the meantime, the only television station outside the government’s control, Imedi TV has not only been shut down under mysterious pretext, but even changed ownership to a complete stranger and a man widely perceived as representing acting government’s interests. [for more details read here].
It has been two weeks since a part of the Georgian opposition has started hunger strike in front of the Georgian Parliament. The opposition has a long list of demands it wants to see satisfied — anything from repeat presidential elections to resignation of interior minister. The authorities on the other hand claim that they are ready for a dialogue, but not for ultimatums.
In fact, the opposition presented its list of demands at the end of January. Satisfaction of these demands was seen as a precondition to hold free and fair parliamentary elections in May.
Except for a few partial agreements, the authorities have largely snubbed this text, saying that it was a list of ultimatums. Instead, a response memorandum was issued by the authorities, which presented their side of the story and promised to compromise on some issues “in case the agreement was reached with the opposition”.
One such proposal was the election code: initially, the authorities included in their response memorandum willingness to adopt a regional proportional election system backed by the opposition. Later constitutional amendments were adopted by ruling party, which not only breached the earlier proposal, but even further diminished the oppositions’ chances to enter the parliament with a significant proportion. For background on elections code changes read here.
Since there was no agreement, the authorities reserved the right to withdraw their own proposals. After this, the opposition went on hunger strike.
On the 12th day of the hunger strike, the Georgian Patriarch intervened to mediate the conflict. He called on the opposition to end the hunger strike and urged the authorities to take steps towards defusing the crisis. The opposition suspended all demands except for one: the rule of electing 75 majoritarian MPs would of multi-mandate constituencies, instead of single-mandate consistencies.
The oppositions’ compromise was rejected as yet another ultimatum. Moreover, the opposition was accused of putting ultimatums to the patriarch himself.
One way or another, the hunger strike continues with several people already in critical condition. Many have been hospitalized. In the meantime the authorities point to their readiness to continue talks, even on the background of unilateral steps taken to aggravate the situation.
Amidst the crisis, one interesting proposal emerged from radical Labor Party — to boycott the May elections as the authorities lack the will to hold elections in free and fair environment. This proposal might in fact gain popularity if the Georgian authorities continue to hold their principled position. And that would be a lose-lose situation for everyone.
In November 2007 Imedi was forcefully shut down by Georgian SWAT teams for allegedly airing “calls for government overthrow”. To put it very shortly, Imedi TV was taken off the air in November because it focused on topics which belittled and threatened the Georgian authorities.
It was later reopened after European mediation headed by the former polish dissident and media ombudsman Adam Mikhnik brought the conflicting sides to compromise.
The message from the West was that quality of democracy in Georgia was determined by media freedom and that Imedi TV is a part of free media.
After debates, consultations, dialogues, time wasting, damaged equipment repair etc. the Imedi TV was reopened and then after a short period of time it went into self-imposed exile. The official reason behind Imedi’s second time disappearance was that the journalists did not want to work in a TV station whose owner (Badri Patarkatsishvili) was incriminated in an attempt of government overthrow.
This version is close to the “dog ate my homework” excuse. It has been almost three months since the TV station was closed down. In the meantime, its “government overthrowing” owner has passed away, new journalists have been born and … Imedi TV is still closed.
What happened with regard to Imedi TV is a mystery. One thing is certain: someone does not want to see this station working and is doing everything possible to keep it that way.
One hope for helping the Imedi TV come back into the Georgian social life was through oppositions’ pressure. But… the Georgian opposition, which had its voice heard thanks to the Imedi TV, has somewhat forgotten about the Imedi TV topic. Instead of focusing on the Imedi TV issue, the opposition turned to protest the Georgian Public Television’s bias towards the acting authorities.
It has been almost a week since about 60 members of the United Georgian opposition are holding a hunger strike in front of the parliament. Another opposition party, the New Rights are on a strike inside the Parliament Speaker’s waiting room.
Since there has been no significant breakthrough in talks with the acting government, the opposition has radicalized its demands. The oppositions’ demand is to honor the memorandum adopted at the end of January. In addition, the new demands call for repeat presidential elections as well as resignation of the Parliament Speaker Nino Burjanadze (who has been the main negotiator with the opposition).
Today, it is reported a crowd of 5 thousand opposition supporters have gathered in front of the parliament.
It is unlikely that the opposition will succeed in pressuring the authorities to bend to their demands. At least for now. Over the last few months capital Tbilisi has seen far larger protests. A crowd of 5 thousand people is close to a trifle for the authorities.
Besides, another presidential elections is hardly conceivable since has been only two months and a half since the last presidential election took place.
In addition, the ruling party is unlikely to agree to resignation of key leaders such as Nino Budjanadze or Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili. It seems there isn’t much common ground left between the conflicting parties at the moment. If the opposition stops its hunger strike without a major victory, it will certainly discredit itself in front of its supporters. And the authorities simply won’t hold another presidential elections.
In short, there is a deadlock. This is hardly good news for any stakeholder in the standoff. Tomorrow the opposition promises to hold a protest rally in front of the US embassy. The same day Georgia’s president Mikheil Saakashvili will be paying an official visit to the US.
The Republican Party has left the United Opposition Front, arguing that this way the acting authorities would be countered more effectively. Republican party leader Levan Berdzenishvili explained this move not as a breakup, but as the “broadening of the front”.
During a popular talk show Prime Time on Rustavi 2, this “broadening of the front” was compared to a football strategy: attacking role from left midfield would be assumed by the Labor Party (Shalva Natelashvili, who recently had a heart operation for which he blamed the authorities), the center would be divided among the Republican Party and remaining 8 parties in the United Opposition, and the right midfield would be controlled by the New Rights Party (Davit Gamkrelidze).
Short passing in the midfield and crosses from the sides promise to beat the ruling party in the parliamentarian elections in Spring. In the meantime, the entire opposition hopes that rules of their upcoming head-to-head will be agreed upon and that the referee (OSCE election mission) will adhere to fair play principles.
If it were not for the football allegory, it would be more logical to conclude that the United Opposition couldn’t agree on the party list for the upcoming elections. Known for their political stars and their organizational skills, the Republicans would not have a problem crossing the 5% barrier needed to enter the parliament. Not many parties from the United Opposition can boast of achieving similar success. Unity? Who cares…
One way or another, Saakashvili’s team didn’t seem very happy about this new strategy. This week they moved to amend the constitutional provisions for elections code — the majoritarian share of parliament will be increased on behalf of the party list candidates.
Post presidential election protests in Armenia have resulted in 8 peoples’ death. This is a tragedy for Armenian people.
It’s amazing how closely the Armenian case resembles the crisis in Georgia just a few weeks ago. Elections contested, thousands in the streets, threats from all sides, fear in the air.
Luckily for Georgians these processes ended (or got postponed) peacefully. But things could easily turn out differently. It is sincerely hoped that similar developments are avoided in the future at all costs. Politicians should think very hard before taking risks of such magnitude.
That in Georgia similar developments did not take place, is a credit to both authorities and the opposition. One blink or a provocation, and chaos would be unavoidable. And Georgians have bitter memories of civil war just 15 years ago…
“Georgia without Poverty” has been Saakashvili’s main campaigning slogan. This ambitious program oversees a five year plan to tackle the poverty problem in Georgia.
Vladimir Papava, an independent parliamentarian and a former minister of economics, thinks this plan is better than all previous attempts to address economic issues in the country. Still, he says, the program is based on wishful statistics and black holes which allow for manipulation.
The good news is that the document is relatively action oriented: if in past superficial phrases (for instance, “construction of viable economic structures are planned to increase GDP”) were used to outline the scope of work, now specific numbers and projections are taken into consideration.
Before anything, how bad is poverty in Georgia? Has this problem been addressed in the past?
Poverty is not a new problem for Georgia. Ever since its independence since 1990s, Georgia has consistently shown increases in poverty levels. There have been attempts to address this issue as well.
Papava explains that during Shevarnadze’s last couple of years as Georgia’s president (2001 - 2003), a plan called “Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Program” was worked out by the government. However, this program, endorsed by World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, was neglected by the new authorities (Saakashvili’s team), because it was considered outdated.
One way or another, research needed for this program showed that 52% of Georgians lived under poverty line between 2002 - 2003. One of the first things the new authorities did was to redefine the methodology of counting the poor: they were assigned less calories while wholesale prices were counted instead of individual ones. As a result, if anyone in Georgia living below 100$ a month was considered poor, Saakashvili’s team put this line at 70$.
In 2004, it turned out that the poverty level in Georgia fell by staggering 17% - thanks to the Rose Revolution. In 2005, even with the new and comfortable methodology of counting the poor, the poverty level went up by 4% to 39%. In 2006, this figure was taken out of the official statistics, but it’s rumored the level shot up to 42%.
Interestingly, the poverty reduction program has been funded by IMF for the last three years and in fact it was successfully completed in 2007. But after the political turmoil in Georgia, poverty reduction once again became the priority.
If from the very the start, the definition of poor and number of poor in Georgia are not defined or properly counted, how to determine if the program is successful? If half of the population lives under poverty line and official statistics are adjusted to half that figure, than poverty is already substantially defeated — within weeks.
