TOL Georgia

Lunch with Saakashvili

May 2nd, 2008 by jibs

What does President Saakashvili eat for lunch? What does he do before his dinner? And what he plans to do after he retires? Financial Times got answers to these questions and provided insight into the “well-over 6 feet charismatic” leader’s views.

– salads, olives, two varieties of caviar – one black, one a lurid orange. Throughout the meal, fresh plates of food are brought in: a platter of fish, some lamb shish kebabs, a spicy sausage that Saakashvili urges me to try.

After that light snack the company took a helicopter ride to inspect a recently graduated Georgian Comandos unit. In the air “sheepishly smiling” Saakashvili reveals there are 10 billionaires in Georgia, and one who dared to oppose him died in London (Badri Patarkatsishvili). What’s with the smile though? Fate favors the bold or think twice before you oppose the “40 year-old-US-educated lawyer”?

From our helicopter the president points out – with great pride – how neat the fields of Georgia now look: “Just like Holland; I never dreamed Georgia could look like that.”

Its a common knowledge that in past the fields of Georgia were swarmed by the orchs who constantly harassed the local population — a terrible sight from the helicopter. It looks great now, just like a normal European field.

We met not at his chosen restaurant but at his half-finished presidential palace on a hill above the centre of Tbilisi. With its glass dome, the new building resembles the Reichstag in Berlin. I asked, as casually as I could, whether it was controversial to spend so much money on a presidential palace when Georgia remains a poor country, albeit one whose economy is growing very fast. “It would be controversial, if that was all I was doing,” he replies, “but we’re also building schools and hospitals. People can see that life is improving. And if officials work in decent offices, with decent equipment, they are more likely to behave like decent human beings.”

The controversial part concerns the period before Saakashvili decided a new presidential residence would induce people to be normal human beings. Prior to his election in 2004, Saakashvili adamantly insisted on remaining in his modest apartment instead of moving into posh presidential residence. His allies’ constant appeals and worries over his security, finally pressured him to change his mind.  A new residence was obviously a must — humanity of officials depended on that…

On Saakashvili’s philosophy of freedom:

“We came from an oppressive society that was lawless. We decided to turn it into a society that is free but where the law is enforced. And that is two difficult transformations.” Saakashvili argues that some of the opposition to him is generated simply by his insistence that people pay tax. “Some people see that as oppressive, they are not used to it.” Freedom, he insists, is about “a much more profound transformation than just proclaiming that we will have free elections.”

So, the opposition to the president stems out of peoples’ refusal to pay taxes — the bloody Soviet mentality that is so hard to stamp out. Those who voted for him, including those adhering to the Soviet mentality, thought he was their ticket to the good-old-taxless-Soviet times, and then he started with the all that capitalist stuff about law and justice. So in fact, opposition to Saakashvili comes from the friction between modern state and atavistic instincts not to pay taxes.

And… Freedom is much more than just “free elections”. There are higher things, such as that transformation of Soviet mentality. Same goes for the freedom of media and opposition– they both confuse the process of cultural transformation by endangering the clarity of the message to the people.

In the end, Saakashvili charmingly hinted on his retirement plans — only 40 years old and already thinking of retirement.

The Georgian president is impressive – energetic, intelligent and with strong liberal views but, I wonder, how long you can live like this without succumbing to megalomania? And how you can ever give it up?

The author of the article is a specialist in detecting the probability of succumbing to megalomania, though, it is hard to determine when this break with “strong liberal views” might take place. It’s not like Saakashvili has been in power for the last 4 years…  The rule is that you can know that for sure only when both presidential terms expire, before that it’s a wild guess.

For future lunches, maybe a glance at some facts could help the uncertainty over the “megalomania” thing. Listen to what the opposition has against the liberal leader in question, or what the OSCE said about those “less important” elections. What about that Imedi TV which remains off the air? And that catastrophic decline in trust towards the institutions? Maybe a public defender could have an explanation or two outside that unwillingness to pay taxes?

Maybe for the next lunch…

Saakashvili is only 40 years old. And what might he do, once he steps down? Saakashvili’s natural ebullience subsides a little. “I don’t know – go and lecture somewhere. At Columbia, maybe.”

But what if the cultural transformation is not over by that time? What if there is no viable alternative to Saakashvili? It would be unethical for the charming-US-educated-6-foot-lawyer to leave his people like that… Wait, how was it that small lili-putin stayed in power? Hmmm, not a bad idea.

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