Rose on the Rocks?
Third Anniversary of Rose Revolution cannot disguise Georgian regime's crisis
A Commentary by Mark Almond
Three years on since his seizure of power in the so-called "Rose Revolution", Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili presides over a country in crisis and a regime in decomposition. Although Georgia's president staged a public celebration of his seizure of power on 23rd November, 2003, in Tbilisi's Freedom Square, the public mood in the country was far from jolly. Mr Saakashvili emphasises restoring national pride and sovereignty, twisting Russia's tail, and Western integration as his achievements. But continuing power cuts, poverty and political repression and in-fighting are what count at home.
In January, 2004, led by US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, the West's great-and-good stood godfather to the new president of Georgia. But on the third birthday of his Rose Revolution, Mr Saakashvili hosted a meagre foreign guest list.
It is an index of the waning of the colour coded revolutions that the chief co-celebrant was Ukraine's embattled President Viktor Yushchenko, whose own Orange Revolution's second birthday passed barely observed by a disillusioned Ukrainian public the day before.
Apart from unveiling a statue of St. George whose feast day falls on 23rd November in Georgia (making a nice name-day for a revolution), Mr Saakashvili asked his old comrade in arms from Ukraine to act as godfather to his eleven month old son, Nikoloz. The baptism had been held up so that it could coincide with the Rose Revolution's anniversary and the presence of his godfather, Viktor Yushchenko.[1] Bizarrely for a former Central Bank Director who met his American-born wife, Katherine, in the United States though Yushchenko has never been recorded uttering a word in his in-laws' English, the Ukrainian President spoke to the dutifully assembled crowd in Tbilisi in Georgian![2]
Mr Saakshavili studied in Ukraine, and speaks his guest's language, and both had gone through the classic upwardly mobile Soviet comrade's career. Childhood holidays at the nomenklatura Artek holiday camp in the Crimea, border guard service to keep the Soviet people in, followed by a post-1991 Gestalt-switch to born-againm ultra-Westernizers. Post-Communism's born-again Komsomolchiks and ex-Soviet-era border guards love nothing better than a church service. From ex-Politburo member Boris Yeltsin in 1991 to today's colour-coded revolutionaries no ceremony is complete with icons and incense. Kiev's Maidan Square has a Nelson's column style gilded nationalist monument and now Tbilisi has Mikheil Saakashvili's column of St. George in Tbilisi's Freedom Square. Saints fill the places of Soviet icons like Lenin, but do the politicians who intone the new faith of Market Democracy and Western integration believe it any more than their old slogans about Socialism and Internationalism?
More to the point do the absent friends who avoided the Rose Revolution anniversary still see President Saakashvili as a useful partner anymore?
Although President Saakashvili's rhetoric in Freedom Square was full of aspirations to achieve membership of NATO and the EU - "Today, Georgia is creating a modern European state. ... [It] should be in the unified European family,."[3]- former fans of the Rose Revolution no longer share that rosy vision of the reality of politics in Georgia today.
The OSCE was less than fulsome about Georgia's local elections staged on 5th October. The OSCE ambassador, Roy Reeve, said that they were worst conducted elections in his seven years in Georgia. In other words worse than the parliamentary elections in November, 2003, whose alleged flaws justified Mr Saakashvili's storming to power. Quite specifically, Mr Reeve said that the electoral rolls were deeply flawed leaving off 8% or 260,000 voters.[4] Claims that Shevardnadze's regime doctored the voter registers in 2003 was the key charge justifying people power on the streets. If Saakashvili's elections are similarly flawed will the indignation of the people remain in check for ever?
When the secretive Soros-funded investigative group, Transparency International[5], barks then post-Soviet rulers know they have been bitten. Onslaughts by TI have been recurring heralds of a regime's demise across the post-Soviet space. So, when TI chose the Saakashvili regime's birthday to denounce the Georgian President's "super-presidential system, which is much likened to the Russian Federation and Central Asian states" then he has reason to worry. To be compared to Putin or Central Asian rulers like Uzbekistan's Karimov is a mortal affront. Worse still maybe Saakashvili is sliding down the slippery slope from globalist affection which was the fate of Kyrgyzstan's Askar Akaev. Once Akaev was feted by the US elite as a "Jeffersonian democrat" (Strobe Talbott), but then the mood in Washington changed and a Tulip Revolution sent Akaev and his golden reputation in the West down the memory hole. Closer to home who can forget James Baker's encomia of Eduard Shevardnadze in 1992 or Baker's reappearance as the ghost of friendship's past in the run-up to the Rose Revolution in summer, 2003, when he told the recipient of the Enron Prize of the James Baker Institute that it was time to retire or else. No-one needs reminding that the James Baker school of unswerving friendship is dominant in foreign policy-making circles in Washington. When TI admits that the Georgian Parliament is weaker than it was before the Rose Revolution – "Influential during Shevardnadze's presidency, it [the Parliament] now performs mostly the rubber stamp function for the government of Saakashvili" – then the legitimacy of the current Georgian regime in the eyes of its former patrons is under question.[6]
Looking to Western friends to turn a blind eye to Georgia's political and human rights failings worked well for both Shevardnadze and Saakashvili until a shift in the global balance of power made small allies even more expendable than usual.
Today America needs Russia much more than it needs Georgia. Saakashvili's posturing may have pandered to the neo-cons' blustering approach to foreign policy, but if anything is to be rescued from Bush's blundering in Iraq and his stalemate with Iran or North Korea Russian support in the UN Security Council is worth a thousand eloquent speeches by Saakashvili.
As for the other major component of NATO, the EU, its member-states, especially its core decision-makers, France, Germany, Italy and Britain, are all increasingly dependent on Russian energy supplies. The Chiracs, Merkels, Blairs and Prodis know that their publics are not as long-suffering or easily put upon as Georgians: Tbilisites may shrug off recurrent power cuts but Parisians, Berliners, Londoners and Romans would toss straight out of office politicians who presided over a winter fuel crisis. Georgia's only real alternative supplier is Iran but going cap in hand to Teheran is not going to help Saakashvili's standing in Washington. [Shevardnadze's cosying up to Iranian President Khatami presaged his loss of grace in Washington.] In any case Moscow has more to offer the ayatollahs than Tbilisi.
The absence of high profile Westerners and the late cancellation of even the Polish President, Lech Kaczynski, meant that Saakashvili had to make do with Estonia's President ex-US citizen Toomas Ilves and Yushchenko. Speaker, Nino Burjanadze took cold comfort from the puny turnout at the Rose celebration saying that the presence of these high-profile guests at the Rose Revolution anniversary "means that we have reliable friends and our unity here means that we have met the expectations of our people after the Rose Revolution."[7]
In reality Washington has begun the process of sounding out alternative leaders for Georgia. Saakashvili should remember how he was feted by Washington think-tanks as Shevardnadze's star waned in North America. Early in the 1990s only Shevardnadze and his protégés like Mikheil Saakashvili had access to policy forums and scholarships at Ivy League colleges. Then around 2000, critics of Shevardnadze like Mikheil Saakashvilu found a ready audience or more precisely echo chamber in official America for criticisms of the aging Shevardnadze. Nowadays even people previously shunned by the US foreign policy establishment are getting a hearing.
Already in July, 2006, the Georgian Labour Party leader, Shalva Natelashvili, was invited to Washington where he met key policy-makers and opinion formers. As Natelashvili noted apart from meeting Senator John McCain, "I also met with the Editor-in-Chief of The Washington Times, who published an interview with me. That had never happened before. The Washington Times used to invite only Saakashvili or [late Georgian Prime Minister] Zurab Zhvania. That confirms that the US is thinking about the post-Saakashvili period."[8]
Recently, Konstantin Gamsakhurdia, the son of the only democratically-elected President of Georgia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, was received at McCain's IRI. The newly-elected majority leader of the House, Steny Hoyer (Democrat – Md) may still hark back to the contempt that he exuded for Zviad – who made the mistake of wanting to discuss Shakespeare with American congressmen back in 1991 _ but McCain is a bigger fish in post-Soviet regime-building and regime-unmaking. If the Arizona presidential hopeful is looking beyond Saakashvili and talking to critics and alternatives of the Georgian president, then maybe Mikheil Saakashvili should wonder whether he will get to move into his monstrous mega-palace that he has been building overlooking Tbilisi city centre any more than another old friend of Washington Romania's Nicolae Ceausescu lived to occupy his presidential palace in Bucharest.
Despite coming from Shevardnadze's entourage like his short-lived premier, Zurab Zhvania, and Speaker, Nino Burdjanadze, Saakashvili has tried to expand his support base by including former Zviadists in token low-ranking positions in his regime and bureaucracy. This reaching out to the Zviadists reflects his weak support base. Many of Shevardnadze's backers lost out after November, 2003, and now oppose the new regime. At the same time many Zviadists have never forgiven Saakashvili and his key allies for their role in the overthrow and murder of Zviad Gamsakhurdia under Shevardnadze and so Saakashvili's attempt to attract them to his side have proved largely fruitless. Even ex-Kmara activists who provided the spearhead of the anti-Shevardnadze demonstrations in Tbilisi now denounce the new order as corrupt and dictatorial.
The mortal threat to Saakashvili's regime comes from within. The politician most likely to succeed him is Irakli Okruashvili.
In November, 2003, Okruashvili organised the march on Tbilisi from his power-base, Stalin's birthplace Gori. The pro-Saakashvili crowd actually assembled under Stalin's giant statue for a pep talk. Little wonder that when they got to Tbilisi they beat savagely the counter-demonstrators assembled to support alternatives to the Rose Revolution. (If you didn't see newsreel of the beatings, don't ask me why CNN and BBC did not show them preferring to report on a "bloodless revolution".)
Okruashvili led the judicial purge of Shevardnadez's allies after the revolution. He went from one key ministry (prosecutor-general, then interior ministry) to another ending up at Defence. But his youthful energy was a threat to Saakashvili.
Once brothers-in-arms in toppling Shevardnadze, Abashidze and any rival to their power-base, Okruashvili seems mortally offended by Saakashvili's decision to remove him from the Defence Ministry and put him in charge of Economics. Ther Georgian Defence Ministry is not only the classic post-Soviet "power ministry" it is also where the money is. The United States has poured training and equipment funds into the Georgian military.[9] Although Saakashvili has subsequently announced that Okruashvili wanted time out of office to take a graduate level course in military studies at a Western military academy, this makes little sense since it was precisely Okruashvili's service at the Ministry of Defence was supposed to have given him the strategic and organisation skills to manage Georgia's economy.[10]
Back in July, Okruashvili seemed on a roll. His rival for influence over policy towards Georgia's breakaway regions, Giorgi Khaindrava, the Minister for Conflict Resolution was sacked and Okruashvili's special forces were then sent into the Upper Kodori Gorge to re-establish Tbilisi's authority on the edge of rebel Abkhazia. But then Saakashvili may have let Okruashvili bite off more than Georgia can chew. South Ossetia foiled a guerrilla attack by 4 Chechens from Georgia's Pankisi Gorge region and re-emphasised how vulnerable Georgia's special forces remained when facing resistance.
Okruashvili's demotion coincided with Saakashvili's talk of amalgamating both presidential and parliamentary elections in 2007. Bringing the presidential election forward ahead its constitutional schedule would save money if held simultaneously with the parliamentary elections – but it would also rule out Okruashvili as a candidate since he would be still a few days short of the statutory 35 years of age to run for president. Maybe Saakashvili will see out his term but past performance suggests that he won't be the first Georgian president to do so nor would he be the first to be ousted by a former protégé if public protests denounce the propose premature polls.
Both Okruashvili and Saakashvili have repeatedly irritated Russia since 2003 and appealed to Russophobia to bolster the regime But there are limits to its appeal or usefulness.
The spy crisis with Russia at the start of October was humiliating for the Kremlin. Seeing four Russian army officers led in handcuffs to their expulsion on television may have pleased Georgian nationalists but was it wise policy? Russia simply turned up its own pressure on Georgia. The ban of allegedly polluted wine and mineral water from Georgia was compounded by a razzia against illegal Georgian migrant workers and worse still by the switching off Georgia's financial lifeline – cash transfers direct from Russia.
Oddly enough neither in Tbilisi nor in Gori in mid-November did I meet anti-Russian feeling. On the contrary the freeze in relations was blamed on "them up there" meaning the political leaders. Ordinary Georgians, including strikingly young people who had grown up since 1991, seemed happier about speaking Russian than in the past. There is a growing disconnect between the official media decrying the "empire" and Saakashvili's attacks on "70 years of occupation" (presumably not by Georgians called Djugashivili, Ordzhonikidze, Beria, et al.)[11] and ordinary attitudes. Privately ordinary Georgians note that fifteen years of infatuation with the West have brought them a standard of life far lower and more insecure than the last fifteen years of "Soviet occupation."
Like Shevardnadze before him, Saakashvili is dangerously dependent on Western support. However whereas Shevardnadze could ignore the impoverishment of his people because an apparently all-powerful United States backed him and Russia was sunk in chaos, today America is less omnipotent and more in need of Russia than ever before.
Playing up the Russian threat as a way of reinforcing Western sympathy for his regime might have worked in the past for Georgian leaders but today Western Europe needs Russian gas and America needs Russian votes in the UN. Little Georgia has only its pipeline from Azerbaijan to offer but since its completion the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline ironically has lost some of its geopolitical value as a card because Georgia cannot afford to see it blocked as a political tool since that would hit the West.
Without an economic upturn which seems as far away as ever, President Saakashvili's regime could find itself isolated from both Russia and the West – that is if the West does not pull the rug from under it in order to get a calmer geopolitical configuration in the Caucasus. Among the urban decay of Tbilisi, statues of St. George and presidential palaces do not signify progress but Ceausescu-style indifference to popular well-being. Public spectacle was Communism's substitute for real democratic participation. Saakashvili may have left the Komsomol but has it left him?
[1] See RIA Novosti, "Ukraine's Yushchenko to godfather Georgia's Saakashvili son" (23rd November, 2006): http://en.rian.ru/world/20061123/55916892.html.
[2] See Regnum, "Yushchenko begins speaking Georgian" (23rd November, 2006): www.regnum.ru/ english/744269.html.
[3] Quoted in AP, "Georgians Celebrate 2003 Rose Revolution" in The Moscow Times (24th Novembwer, 2006): http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2006/11/24/016.html
[4] See "OSCE Short of Georgian Electors" in Kommersant (23rd November, 2006): http://www.kommersant.com/p724074/r_500/Elections_Georgia/.
[5] Rather as the post-Securitate Romanian Information Service gets information and does not give it out, so Transparency International demands public disclosure in all matters financial – except from the hedge-fund philanphropist who backs it.
[6] See Civil Georgia, "TI Report Criticizes the Division of Authority in Georgia" (23rd November, 2006): http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=14157
[7] See Civil Georgia, "Ukraine, Estonia, Poland pledge Support" (23rd November, 2006): http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=14160
[8] See Maia Marglevani, "Shalva Natelashvili: 'It's time for Saakashvili's political funeral.'"
in Georgian Times (24th July, 2006): http://www.geotimes.ge/index.php?m=home&newsid=973.
[9] See Sergei Strokan, "Big Payoff Expected. The price of the question" in Kommersant (21st November, 2006): http://www.kommersant.com/p723033/r_520/
[11] Mrs Saakashvili, Sandra Roelof, declared that Georgia needed such politicians: "
"Georgia has produced strong leaders. Stalin, Beria, Gamsakhurdia. Even Shevardnadze, before he got addicted to power. They looked beyond Georgia. My husband does the same; he fits in the tradition. This country needs a strong hand." See Richard W. Carlson, "Georgia on His Mind. George Soros's Potemkin revolution" in The Weekly Standard (24th May, 2004):
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Check.asp?idArticle=4104&r=ygtvi
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