Who is Mr Ivanishvili?

By Georgy Kalatozishvili, exclusively to VK

Georgian billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, who declared his going across to the opposition side four months ago, recently crossed a line after which there’s no reconciliation with Mikheil Saakashvili. This point of no return was the demarche of Ivanishvili, who has stepped on Saakashvili’s portrait during a demonstration honoring the memory of Zurab Vasagashvili, who died in a shootout with police 6 years ago. Ivanishvili consciously joined the action of the most radical opposition force, so he had to confirm his readiness to oppose the president in a radical manner. The action he chose to take made the top-news of all Georgian media agencies.

There’s an old Georgian saying: “Never do anything in the heat of an argument to your opponent that you’ll be ashamed of when it’s time to make peace”. In the Caucasus a personal insult weighs much more than any political reasoning. And Mikheil Saakashvili never allowed himself to personally insult his rivals, he just vaguely spoke of ‘forces of destabilization financed from abroad’.

This demarche of Ivanishvili means that he isn’t a mere opposition figure anymore, he has declared war on Saakashvili. However, it doesn’t show him as an efficient politician ready to compromise and able to prevent any internal conflicts from spinning out of control and turning into a civil war. There has already been a civil war in Georgia in early 90s, and the wounds haven’t healed yet.

As George Louis de Buffon said, “style makes the person.” For those who know the recent history of Georgia well enough, Ivanishvili’s style looks pretty dangerous. It is not only his first declarations compiled in the Italian Red Brigades’ style, it is in his very manner of behaving and talking, while his political concept or program is in fact non-existent, or at least no one has ever heard of them.

On the contrary, everybody knows that the billionaire who lived in his native village of Chorvila in Western Georgia has organized… a penguin farm there. He spent tens of millions of dollars of his 5-billion-dollar fortune on this venture, as penguins need a specific climate that is expensive to sustain in a southern country. If Ivanishvili didn’t want to become the president of Georgia and "radically change the outlook of the country, to make the Georgian dream come true," such eccentricity could be easily forgiven… But for a future ‘savior of Georgia’ it is too much.

There’s a popular joke among Georgians that is founded on a real incident: they say that Ivanishvili fired one of the guards of his penguin farm because a penguin swallowed a swallow and died. Ivanishvili, in rage, asks the guard: “What the hell was a swallow doing in my penguin pool?!” And the guard answers: “What the hell are the penguins doing in Georgia?!”

Such a joke, innocent as it is, creates a certain stereotype and would prevent Ivanishvili from using his favorite ‘regular Georgian guy’ image in his campaign. The voters are usually scared of the unknown, but they are even more scared by the eccentricity of the politician, even though they enjoy reading about it in the gutter press. People would choose a good old politician that they understand, even though they are tired of him, over a new and mysterious candidate.

That is why Saakashvili is doing all in his power to show his ‘normality’ and ‘regular guy’ qualities. He bought a vineyard in Kakhetia, demonstrating a traditional Georgian love of good wine (while those who personally know him say he doesn’t like wine and prefers cognac). Even the rumors of his amours are helping him to sustain this ‘regular’ image. Some condemn it, but it is a common and understandable human vice, unlike the interest towards farming penguins that frankly looks quite freaky in Georgia.

Penguins, however, aren’t the only weird thing about Ivanishvili. In the first, most expected, TV-interview of the new politician he started talking about… Sigmund Freud, even before the program’s hostess could open her mouth to ask a question. Ivanishvili spoke of psychosis, psychoanalysis, of a new method of children’s upbringing that he has developed himself, of a Georgian psychiatric school that he has founded… In short, he spoke about things that are of no interest to a regular Georgian person. He even tried to recite a well-known poem learned in school, but made a mistake. So a person who tries to show himself to be a national leader unconsciously demonstrates his eccentricity.

The Georgian national mentality has no hostility towards wealth, so his billons don’t make anyone uncomfortable; on the contrary, his business career makes him an exemplary person.  And there’s nothing bad about his interest in Freud, but it seems very odd that he brought that up in his very first big political interview. And if Ivanishvili is so interested in psychology, why couldn’t he notice that the English tutor he hired for his children and who taught them for several months was in fact a psychologically-distressed person who left his position and finished by writing a treatise almost in Breivik-style.  The story looks pretty odd.

Next time I will tell you about Ivanishvili’s political style.

To be continued.