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Tue., November 27, 2007 Kislev 17, 5768

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Last update - 23:02 27/11/2007

Georgia on his mind

By Lily Galili

Tags: Georgia, Russia

One day in June 1995, Lasha Zhvania, an official at the Georgian Foreign Ministry's Israel desk, was reviewing the reports he had received about former Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze's visit to Israel. One passage in particular piqued his interest. It was a transcript of a conversation in which Shevardnadze warned then-Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin that the path he had chosen was dangerous, both for him and for his government. Rabin responded that a leader is just like a bus driver. He can't look backward and listen to the passengers' complaints; he must grasp the wheel and keep his eye on the road.

This week, Zhvania, now Georgia's ambassador to Israel, recalled that conversation, albeit in a different context. Last Friday, the Georgian embassy marked the fourth anniversary of the country's Rose Revolution, which ended Shevardnadze's rule and brought Mikheil Saakashvili to power. The revolution was undertaken with both determination and sensitivity. Its unfolding sparked the West's imagination, just like the new president, then a 35-year-old politician, who had earned his degree at Columbia University. This year, the revolution's anniversary was celebrated on the same day Saakashvili was legally required to resign his post, in order to run in the presidential elections, which have been moved up to January 5.

Electricity and old age

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In early November, Saakashvili announced early elections, in response to the mass demonstrations recurring on Tbilisi's main street, which were quelled with considerable force and only served to reinforce the president's anti-democratic image, both inside Georgia and abroad. Saakashvili declared a state of national emergency and as a result all media outlets, apart from the state-run television, were closed for a few days. They were eventually allowed to operate again, thanks to pressure from within the country and from the international community.

Until the announcement of early elections, Georgian political analysts and political scientists thought the country was sliding toward civil war. They believe the announcement prevented it. "It's Saakashvili at his best," said Giorgi Margvelashvili, a political scientist from Tbilisi University. Now even the president's opponents believe he will emerge victorious, despite, and perhaps even because of, the fact that seven candidates from the divided opposition are running against him. It appears that the Georgian Jewish oligarch Badri Patarkatsishvili is among them. Patarkatsishvili is considered one of the backers of the opposition's demonstrations.

"In my view, the future still resembles what I envisioned back then," insists Zhvania, 34, a member of the generation that led the Rose Revolution. His contemporaries took over Georgia's government and most of the country's positions of power when they were below the age of 30. At the time, their advantage was their lack of experience with the Soviet method; their disadvantage today is their lack of practical experience in leadership and governance. But Zhvania maintains that in the current reality inexperience is a marginal factor. To him, the core of the problem consists of the accelerated economic reforms, which harmed too many people.

"We decided on aggressive liberalization," he says. "We didn't pay enough attention to the social crises. On the one hand, we brought investors; but on the other hand, we weren't sensitive enough. Until four years ago, we lived in a country that didn't have electricity. By 2007, we had resolved all the energy problems. There is electricity in the rural areas as well; even in the mountains on the Russian border, people point to the pipes transporting gas to their homes and to the cellular antennas. However, I understand that it's impossible to feed people with pipes and antennas. If there isn't enough employment in the public sector, it is necessary to create jobs in the private sector."

Zhvania is referring to the 40,000 policemen who were dismissed in one single day from the police force, which he calls "corrupt." As a result of the layoff, their families became hostile to the government. Zhvania also includes those who were dismissed from the sullied bureaucracy and relates that while 118 different permits were once needed to open a business, today only eight are required.

"There is also a psychological aspect to this story," he says. "If you ask a Georgian taxi driver about the job situation, he will tell you he is unemployed. During the Soviet era, employment was entirely dependent on the government and any work outside the government sector was not considered work. It's no longer like that for the young people, but this perception has become entrenched among the older generation." This is one of the reasons why it is difficult to estimate Georgia's unemployment rate - a rough estimate has it as at least 20 percent.

There are some similarities between Israel and Georgia. Both peoples believe that God Himself, in all His glory, chose for them the strip of land where they live. Both nations feel they are superior to their neighbors and that they deserve much more. Despite the huge gap between the standard of living in Israel and in Georgia, many Israelis are familiar with the experiences of liberalization and accelerated privatization, which leave victims in their wake.

For Israelis, the old woman in the hospital corridor has become a symbol of social collapse - in Georgia it is the old woman with the electricity bill. Not long ago, one such woman knocked on the door of a government office and demanded to meet with the minister to find out why her electricity bill is so high. "First she cried that there was no electricity, now she's crying over the bill," complained the guard who prevented her from entering.

A mouse vs. an elephant

In Georgia, internal shakeups are never purely domestic matters. Its geopolitical location, and the growing tensions with neighboring Russia, not to mention the separatist movements (in Abkhazia and South Ossetia), turn any disturbance into a regional issue. This reality is especially important at a time when Georgia is making its way into NATO, with the West's support and much to Russia's dismay.

Zhvania is convinced that the recent demonstrations in Tbilisi were in part initiated by the neighboring superpower. To back his claim, he quotes Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who on the day of the big demonstration said that "Georgia deserves a better life and a better leadership." And how did Georgia respond to this statement? "Not with words of thanks," Zhvania replies diplomatically.

The tension predates the election of the pro-American Saakashvili to the post of president, when two men were apprehended before they were able to assassinate him. The captives admitted that they were being operated by the Russian secret service. The Georgians, for their part, looked around and decided they did not want a slave-master relationship with their large neighbor, like several other countries around them. Still, this episode does not necessarily justify provocations by Georgia, mostly verbal ones. As such, Saakashvili has referred to Vladimir Putin as "a short guy" and a minister upset about the Russian embargo of Georgian wine imports publicly stated that the "Russians are capable of drinking urine, too."

When asked whether such remarks don't reak of revolutionary euphoria and are a sign of the young leaders' political-diplomatic inexperience, Zhvania is silent, then laughs and only afterward answers: "No one's perfect. It's just like the story about the elephant that breaks all the dishes in the little mouse's kitchen. The mouse controls itself for a long time, but in the end it gets angry and shouts. In response, the elephant complains that the mouse is to blame because it's shouting. So we're shouting, sometimes using harsh words and loudly, against what Russia is doing to us in an attempt to thwart our entry into NATO. The noise we're making is also a call for help from the international community."

Zhvania is convinced that the old Soviet Union is not dead. "Their regional ambitions have not ended, and they must be finished off once and for all," he says; "proof for this can be found in Putin's speech last week. As far as we are concerned, Russia must decide if it wants to have an uneasy neighbor, or a stable neighbor with a thriving economy." Can Georgia's shouts and occasional provocations evolve into a regional war? "No," responds Zhvania. "We are young, but we are aware of reality. While the mouse is indeed angry, it cannot declare war against the elephant."

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