A new trend appeared in the Central Asia: it is a diplomatic propriety to discuss Georgian reforms and say “learn from Saakashvili in a proper way.” The Kyrgyz PMs were first to stand on this path. They visit Tbilisi one a month to learn new methods of anti-corruption fight. Now Nursultan Nazarbayev’s son-in-law, Timur Kulibayev, joined the fan club of Georgian modernization. He cited Goeriga as an example of effective struggle against bureaucratization in official circles. According to him, Astana should apprise systemically relations between business and bureaucrats in the South Caucasian republic: “Our current approach doesn’t work. We have more than a thousand of authorization documents, 400 inquiries, while even 100 are difficult to remember,” Kulibayev said.
Why do our Eurasian partners pay attention not to Russian modernization experience, but to information about Georgian reforms? And there is a lot of information: the radical police reform, when 15 thousand employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were fired; the taxes reform, after which number of taxes was reduced fourfold; anti-corruption struggle; the energy reform, which not only provided the whole Georgia with electricity, but also enabled its export.
How should we accept it? Should we take offense that Kulibayev and the Kyrgyzs learn not from our bureaucrats? Should we search for the Western hand, which pushes our partners into Saakashvili’s embraces? Should we state that American money could turn small Georgia into gold? Of course all these arguments could be true, but if we consider Georgia as our opponent since August 2008, we should admit that they have something to learn from. Kyrgyzstan admitted it, now – Timur Kulibayev, but it doesn’t mean that they become enemies of Russia. We need to understand that an image of a Russian bureaucrat, who works with Kazakh businessmen and Kyrgyz labor migrants, doesn’t encourage studying of Russian experience in the sphere of anti-corruption and anti-bureaucratic fight.
Georgy Kalatozishvili, Tbilisi. Exclusively to VK
