Georgia: Sieg Heil, Saakashvili! New Flag marks return to bad old ways.
Georgia's descent into reborn totalitarianism took another symbolic but probably decisive step on 15th January 2004. Reuters informed its readers in typically bland prose:
"With a single dissenting vote, parliament approved the flag, a medieval symbol of the Black Sea nation featuring a large red cross on a white background and smaller crosses in the corners. It immediately replaces the maroon, black and white flag used by the short-lived independent Georgian state crushed by Bolshevik troops in 1921. That flag was reintroduced in 1990 as the Soviet Union neared collapse."
The new flag is the banner of the Georgian National Movement, the political vehicle of Mikheil Saakashvili. Mr. Saakashvili was the leader of the black leather-jacketed mob which stormed the Georgian Parliament on 22nd November 2003, under that flag. A chorus of enthusiasm for his seizure of power went out from the assembled Western human rights monitors, diplomats and media who immediately dubbed the event the "rose revolution." Air-waves and newsprint across the West were filled with glowing accounts of how the new regime marked a rebirth of democracy, freedom and civil society. His election as president with 96% of the official vote tally was endorsed without hesitation by the representatives of the very same official election observing agencies, the OSCE and the Council of Europe, who had endorsed his discredited predecessor, Eduard Shevardnadze's 95% in October 1992.
Yet any historically informed observer might question how often a putsch leads to stable democracy and pluralism. In what genuine democracy does any candidate, however popular, get almost 100% of the votes? Even more to the point, no respecter of the right to dissent in a free society can observe the adoption of a party flag as the national symbol with anything but deep disquiet.
As Reuters reported, only one MP could summon up the courage to dissent from the abolition of the anti-Communist Georgian flag which had been replaced by the red flag of the Soviet state in 1921, when Lenin occupied Stalin's native land. Georgians know from their own history that the unification of party and state emblems symbolises the extinction of political liberty and pluralism.
Now fifteen years after the so-called "velvet revolutions" swept away monolithic Communist rule in Central Europe, the totalitarian aspiration to unity of party, state and nation has been reborn in Georgia to the applause of the very international human rights monitors who never cease to talk about democracy, civil society and freedom.
The unity of party, state and nation is a classic claim of totalitarian regimes. The amalgamation of the Nazi Party's own swastika flag with the national flag of Germany after 1933 was Hitler's way of symbolising what he and his henchmen repeatedly claimed: that "movement and people were one."
In the Soviet Union, the red flag of the Communist Party became the banner of the Soviet state and its final lowering from the Kremlin on 25th December 1991 was the visible end of the totalitarian system in Russia.
Yet today in Georgia, applauded by Western human rights watchdogs like the OSCE and Council of Europe, backed up by the denizens of Western embassies and the Western media, the Georgian Parliament symbolically abolished political pluralism by adopting the flag of a political movement as the symbol of the state and national identity.
As in Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, opponents of the ruling party will be easily stigmatised as traitors to the nation and state because they do not respect and fall in behind the national flag which is the banner of the President's political movement. It is difficult to imagine a more sinister expression of the intention to smash all political opposition and pluralism than this explicit identification of Presidential party and Georgian nation.
The so-called revolution of roses was such a transparent palace coup that Shevardnadze's former Number Two, Zurab Zhvania, has made an effortless transition to being Saakashvili's State Minister, i.e., minister of the administration and de facto prime minister. According to Reuters, Zhvania justified Georgia's adoption of the National Movement's party flag to the docile parliamentarians:
"We need a flag that embodies our victory. This is a symbol under which the Georgian nation gained its first victory, viewed with joy by the whole world and called the 'rose revolution'."
Note how the flag of a party symbolises the victory of the Georgian nation. Therefore those supporters of the Revival or Labour parties, for instance, who have questioned the legitimacy of the seizure of power by Saakashvili and Zhvania as well as the grotesque unanimity of the Presidential election which they staged afterwards, are disqualified from being part of the Georgian nation. Only supporters of the revolution can shelter under the national flag. It was of course raised at the foot of the Stalin statue in the former mass murderer's birthplace, Gori, where Saakashvili's supporters chose to begin their march on Tblisi in November 2003. From its inception the new Georgian flag was under a Stalinist shadow.
A few dissidents who had perhaps backed Saakashvili have begun to recognise the impending danger. "I cannot support this. On Jan. 4, I chose a president, not an emperor," said David Koguashvili of the opposition New Rights party. "Let's not be fooled, it is a party flag."
Saakashvili has told the puppet-parliament left over from the corrupt elections under Shevardnadze in November 1999 (when Zurab Zhvania was chief organiser of the pro-Shevardnadze frauds), that he would not agree to any reductions in the President's plenitude of power drafted for the convenience of his reviled predecessor.
Saakashvili's aggressive and intolerant style has long been for all to see - except the generous Western sponsors of the so-called "independent sector", i.e., the heavy mob from Rustavi who stormed parliament on 22nd November. Or is it that, just as the West ignored Shevardnadze's dictatorship so long as he did what they wanted, and then dumped him when he could no longer deliver, it is not interested in real human rights and democracy?
Before the parliamentary elections on 2nd November 2003, Saakashvili appeared in public waving a sword and threatening to behead opponents. His apologists in the Western media and human rights community put this florid language down to "theatrics" and ignored the overweening intolerance of opposition or alternative points of view expressed by Saakashvili. However, since his own election as president Saakashvili blood-curdling threats have not ceased On 12th January, he declared:
"Anyone who disturbs the sleep of an ordinary citizen will be ruthlessly punished and exterminated." [Quoted by RFE/RL Caucasus Report (15th January 2004) from its own Georgian Service.]
With regard to possible protests by prisoners still incarcerated in Shervardnadze's isolators and gulag, Reuters reported the President-elect telling parliament:
"We will shoot down the rioters. We will not spare bullets against them." [Quoted by Reuters Foundation AlertNet, 12th January 2004.]
Needless to add, none of the human rights agencies and embassies who have endorsed Saakashvili's seizure of power have shown any more interest in prison conditions in Georgia under the new regime than they did under the old.
Georgia's rose revolution turns out to have few blossoms but a lot of thorns.
Georgia's descent into reborn totalitarianism took another symbolic but probably decisive step on 15th January 2004. Reuters informed its readers in typically bland prose:
"With a single dissenting vote, parliament approved the flag, a medieval symbol of the Black Sea nation featuring a large red cross on a white background and smaller crosses in the corners. It immediately replaces the maroon, black and white flag used by the short-lived independent Georgian state crushed by Bolshevik troops in 1921. That flag was reintroduced in 1990 as the Soviet Union neared collapse."
The new flag is the banner of the Georgian National Movement, the political vehicle of Mikheil Saakashvili. Mr. Saakashvili was the leader of the black leather-jacketed mob which stormed the Georgian Parliament on 22nd November 2003, under that flag. A chorus of enthusiasm for his seizure of power went out from the assembled Western human rights monitors, diplomats and media who immediately dubbed the event the "rose revolution." Air-waves and newsprint across the West were filled with glowing accounts of how the new regime marked a rebirth of democracy, freedom and civil society. His election as president with 96% of the official vote tally was endorsed without hesitation by the representatives of the very same official election observing agencies, the OSCE and the Council of Europe, who had endorsed his discredited predecessor, Eduard Shevardnadze's 95% in October 1992.
Yet any historically informed observer might question how often a putsch leads to stable democracy and pluralism. In what genuine democracy does any candidate, however popular, get almost 100% of the votes? Even more to the point, no respecter of the right to dissent in a free society can observe the adoption of a party flag as the national symbol with anything but deep disquiet.
As Reuters reported, only one MP could summon up the courage to dissent from the abolition of the anti-Communist Georgian flag which had been replaced by the red flag of the Soviet state in 1921, when Lenin occupied Stalin's native land. Georgians know from their own history that the unification of party and state emblems symbolises the extinction of political liberty and pluralism.
Now fifteen years after the so-called "velvet revolutions" swept away monolithic Communist rule in Central Europe, the totalitarian aspiration to unity of party, state and nation has been reborn in Georgia to the applause of the very international human rights monitors who never cease to talk about democracy, civil society and freedom.
The unity of party, state and nation is a classic claim of totalitarian regimes. The amalgamation of the Nazi Party's own swastika flag with the national flag of Germany after 1933 was Hitler's way of symbolising what he and his henchmen repeatedly claimed: that "movement and people were one."
In the Soviet Union, the red flag of the Communist Party became the banner of the Soviet state and its final lowering from the Kremlin on 25th December 1991 was the visible end of the totalitarian system in Russia.
Yet today in Georgia, applauded by Western human rights watchdogs like the OSCE and Council of Europe, backed up by the denizens of Western embassies and the Western media, the Georgian Parliament symbolically abolished political pluralism by adopting the flag of a political movement as the symbol of the state and national identity.
As in Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, opponents of the ruling party will be easily stigmatised as traitors to the nation and state because they do not respect and fall in behind the national flag which is the banner of the President's political movement. It is difficult to imagine a more sinister expression of the intention to smash all political opposition and pluralism than this explicit identification of Presidential party and Georgian nation.
The so-called revolution of roses was such a transparent palace coup that Shevardnadze's former Number Two, Zurab Zhvania, has made an effortless transition to being Saakashvili's State Minister, i.e., minister of the administration and de facto prime minister. According to Reuters, Zhvania justified Georgia's adoption of the National Movement's party flag to the docile parliamentarians:
"We need a flag that embodies our victory. This is a symbol under which the Georgian nation gained its first victory, viewed with joy by the whole world and called the 'rose revolution'."
Note how the flag of a party symbolises the victory of the Georgian nation. Therefore those supporters of the Revival or Labour parties, for instance, who have questioned the legitimacy of the seizure of power by Saakashvili and Zhvania as well as the grotesque unanimity of the Presidential election which they staged afterwards, are disqualified from being part of the Georgian nation. Only supporters of the revolution can shelter under the national flag. It was of course raised at the foot of the Stalin statue in the former mass murderer's birthplace, Gori, where Saakashvili's supporters chose to begin their march on Tblisi in November 2003. From its inception the new Georgian flag was under a Stalinist shadow.
A few dissidents who had perhaps backed Saakashvili have begun to recognise the impending danger. "I cannot support this. On Jan. 4, I chose a president, not an emperor," said David Koguashvili of the opposition New Rights party. "Let's not be fooled, it is a party flag."
Saakashvili has told the puppet-parliament left over from the corrupt elections under Shevardnadze in November 1999 (when Zurab Zhvania was chief organiser of the pro-Shevardnadze frauds), that he would not agree to any reductions in the President's plenitude of power drafted for the convenience of his reviled predecessor.
Saakashvili's aggressive and intolerant style has long been for all to see - except the generous Western sponsors of the so-called "independent sector", i.e., the heavy mob from Rustavi who stormed parliament on 22nd November. Or is it that, just as the West ignored Shevardnadze's dictatorship so long as he did what they wanted, and then dumped him when he could no longer deliver, it is not interested in real human rights and democracy?
Before the parliamentary elections on 2nd November 2003, Saakashvili appeared in public waving a sword and threatening to behead opponents. His apologists in the Western media and human rights community put this florid language down to "theatrics" and ignored the overweening intolerance of opposition or alternative points of view expressed by Saakashvili. However, since his own election as president Saakashvili blood-curdling threats have not ceased On 12th January, he declared:
"Anyone who disturbs the sleep of an ordinary citizen will be ruthlessly punished and exterminated." [Quoted by RFE/RL Caucasus Report (15th January 2004) from its own Georgian Service.]
With regard to possible protests by prisoners still incarcerated in Shervardnadze's isolators and gulag, Reuters reported the President-elect telling parliament:
"We will shoot down the rioters. We will not spare bullets against them." [Quoted by Reuters Foundation AlertNet, 12th January 2004.]
Needless to add, none of the human rights agencies and embassies who have endorsed Saakashvili's seizure of power have shown any more interest in prison conditions in Georgia under the new regime than they did under the old.
Georgia's rose revolution turns out to have few blossoms but a lot of thorns.
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