Georgia continues searches for dozens of people missing in the terrible flood of Sunday. As a result of a downpour, the River Vere flooded residential quarters, the zoo and the Square of Heroes, where a stele to Georgian soldiers and civilians killed in the Russian-Georgian War is located.
15 bodies have been found in submerged houses and the river valley, where a high-speed highway had been built by Mikheil Saakashvili to connect the Square of Heroes with the residential districts of Vake and Saburatlo. The road was the main cause of the unprecedented tragedy that put Tbilisi on the front pages of world press: flooding of the zoo, escape of predators, the hunt for them.
'Long and tedious procedures'
Naturally, Georgia speculates about the causes of the disaster, searching for the people responsible. Specialists say that if it were not for the high-speed highway in the center of the capital, the victims could have been avoided. 'Flyovers should have been built instead of a road, the water would have gone under the pillars and not flooded everything around,' says honored architect of the country Giga Batiashvili.
But the problem is that construction of a flyover was a lot more time-consuming and it could not be high-speed. The young reformers valued every single day and week. Losing time meant losing their reputation as fighters against corruption.
It is important to fathom that Saakashvili was emphasizing the corruption during the presidency of Shevardnadze and now in modern Ukraine. And it is not just the graft, it is also the failure of the government to make swift and efficient decisions. 'We do not need long and tedious procedures,' Saakashvili kept repeating in response to accusations of voluntarism.
Consulting ecologists, hydrologists and experts of scientific institutes refers to 'long procedures' as well. In Saakashvili's terms, corruption means the inability to take swift, risky and resolute decisions.
Many who listened to the Georgian reformer's revelations of corruption tend to miss that it includes graft, bureaucratic procedures that hinder quick and successful reforms.
If the procedures were conducted, the events of June 14 in Tbilisi could have probably been avoided. A reformer is always thinking about the best, such downpours happen just once in 50 years. The chances are good.
What if they are not?
Employment of common sense
While combating corruption in urban planning, Saakashvili simplified the system of issuing construction permits in the city. People were freed from having to go through all the bureauctatic officers, grovelling before functionaries and begging for permits. The president boasted in an interview that the country was ahead of many European countries in the Doing Business rating and in issuing construction permits. 'Starting house construction in Georgia requires just three-four steps, compared to about thirty steps in most countries of the world, dozens of forms and so on,' Mishiko often reiterated.
As a result, people free from the shackles of corrupt bureaucracy were getting permits for construction of multi-storey houses in the valley on the bank of the dangerous river in just a day or two. Rescuers are now finding bodies in deep ooze left after the flood, their houses have been wiped out.
I anticipate objections: 'But if Saakashvili had not abolished the corrupt city services feeding on people's blood, they would have got their construction permits for the River Vere after paying bribes!' Any bureaucracy takes bribes. Time is money for it. Winning time to issue a permit in months is one thing. Risking their posts by giving the go-ahead for housing construction on the Vere River is a different one.
During Saakashvili's presidency and his merciless fight against corruption, nothing obliged the architectural service of the mayor's office to consult hydrologists, ecologists and so on. Only the houses themselves and the soil were checked.
In the heat of reforms
As a result of a fire in the resort city of Kobuleti, members of a dance ensemble died. It turned out that the hotel was built violating fire safety rules. And then again, there is no one to blame. The services responsible for fire safety were closed down after Saakashvili took over the presidential seat. 'They are corrupt and hinder business,' he stressed. Municipal authorities cannot even approach a hotel and offend a businessman with annoying questions about safety measures.
As a result, a terrible tragedy occurred, shocking the country. The poor parents cannot understand that it is the price the society has paid for freedom from bureaucratic mayhem and corruption, Realizing that there are thousands of hotels and the fire started in only one of them does not make things any easier for them.
But what if the fire service stayed? Would they have demanded a bribe for a safety permit? Probably not! If there had been a functionary responsible for fire safety in Kobuleti Council, he would be in jail for many years for negligence. Who is to blame today? No one. The owner of the hotel, a businessman, says that he had all the municipal permits in order and children caused the accident by playing with fire.
Uncorrupt rednecks
Let us take the most renowned reform of Saakashvili, the formation of police patrols. Tens of thousands of corrupt professionals were booted out of the police immediately. I emphasize, they were corrupt but professional.
Here is one of the outcomes: a police officer in a patrol car shot dead 22-year-old Buta Robakidze on November 23, 2004. The officer was a novice. But he was an absolutely honest and uncorrupt officer, who had undergone hasty training, most of which was formal.
The murder was one of the reasons why Mikheil Saakashvili's party lost, because the parents of the murdered man led an opposition movement and did not want to hear anything about the tragic mistakes as an inevitable price for the reforms. Journalists have established that the corrupt regime of Shevardnadze had no cases of police killing a suspect. Why? Because Shevardnadze's police were professionals. The patrol officers hired throughout the prestigious reform were mostly honest rednecks who had problems distinguishing a pistol from a shovel or an axe.
Those rednecks were recruited for SWAT units after two weeks of training in the US. The result is hideous unprofessionalism during the shooting of young Tbilisi resident Zurab Vazagashvili and many others during the Tennis Court Operation on the bank of the River Kura.
According to the reformers' logic, such tragedies are inevitable in the process of reforms. Saakashvili's team often releats: 'Only idle people make no mistakes.' But some of the cases are systemic. Besides, the horrible mistakes have resulted in disappointment with the reforms.
In destroying the old system in thunderous modernization, the reformers make society pay a dear price for the reforms and enhancements. Only a few people pay the price, which causes the formation of a class of furious people claiming to be sacrifices to the happiness and prosperity of others. The fate of the reformers in Georgia is a bright example of such a dichotomy.
However, they do not lose hope and show readiness to start from the beginning, in a different country.
