by RIA Novosti
Reports about torture in Georgian prisons this week is ruining confidence in the efficiency of Georgian law enforcers that President Mikheil Saakashvili boasted of, said Alexey Vlasov, Director of the North-South Center for Political Analysis and Editor-in-Chief of VK.
The scandal over tortures started in Georgia early this week. The Georgian Interior Ministry reported on Tuesday that Gldan Prison N8 in Tbilisi had cases of violence against convicts. According to investigators, a group of security officers “was treating convicts brutally and recording the process”. Georgian prosecutors reported arrests of 10 officers of the Ministry for Corrections and Legal Assistance, including deputy director of the ministry’s department and director of the Gldan Prison.
“In terms of the moment chosen for reports about the facts, the time was no doubt very well-set, at the upcoming parliamentary polls of October 1: in order for the news to be recalled and to affect the voters uncertain with their choice of candidates”, Vlasov told RIA Novosti. On the other hand, he goes on, reports about torture in Georgian prisons are a blow to the confidence in efficiency and competency of law enforcers. President Saakashvili and former Interior Minister and incumbent Prime Minister Vano Merabishvili were always proud with police reforms. “This context seems more essential and topical to me, because it is obvious that if Saakashvili leaves the big politics under US pressure in 2013, Merabishvili would be the most likely successor of the Georgian president”, the political analyst adds.
Vlasov is confident that the echo of this information will be heard again in state corridors during discussions of how successful Georgian reforms were, how successful modernization carried out according to western standards was. The Georgian president called the reforms an example for South Caucasus and all post-Soviet space as a whole.
Commenting on who was the one to release the information, Vlasov noted that it could have been opposition. “Saakashvili used such releases against his political opponents on many occasions. Any opposition force could be interested in discrediting the former interior minister and the incumbent president. Moreover, I would not search for foreign traces in this case. Georgia has plenty of people who doubt that his (Saakashvili’s) miraculous recipes of political reforms”, the expert says. In his opinion, “such outrageous facts proving that not all is perfect in Georgia, could have been dropped in by any opposition force striving to win the upcoming parliamentary polls”.
Enver Kesriyev, head of the Caucasus sector of the Center for Civilization and Regional Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, agrees that the videos of tortures at the Gldan Prison were published due to the parliamentary polls. “Tortures in prisons are generally a normal phenomenon, especially in countries that have become democratic and liberal recently. Because a man does not break off “good old habits”. The fact that they were announced to the public is due to the elections”, he says. The expert assumes that such pre-electoral games will not make a big impact on the voting in October. “Elections will still be controlled by the ruling elites and it is their opinion, not the people’s, that will affect the results. Politics will not change. It will be the very same Georgia we see today”, Kesriyev concludes.
The expert noted that the situation cannot aggravate outrage common Georgians over reforms of Saakashvili. “I would not be surprised if I learn that the public is disappointed (with reforms). Because the majority of the population runs a very poor life in Georgia”, he said.
