Georgia: will National Movement be equated to Nazis?

Georgia: will National Movement be equated to Nazis?


Georgi Kalatozishvili, Tbilisi. Exclusively for Vestnik Kavkaza

A protest was organized by the United National Movement (UNM) party in Tbilisi. Supporters of Mikheil Saakashvili managed to gather tens of thousands of people on the central Freedom Square and symbolically showed a ‘red card’ to the authorities, demanding the resignation of Irakli Garibashvili’s government and stopping “the informal rule of Russian oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili.” Addressing the meeting live from Brussels, the former president made it clear that he intended to return to power, notwithstanding the resistance of “the Russian oligarch.”

Is ‘the second coming’ of Saakashvili real, given that there are objective (legal) and subjective factors, preventing his return to the country? The point is not even in the fact that the general prosecution service has initiated four criminal cases against Saakashvili, accusing him of corruption and abuse of power. The more valuable thing is that Georgian society has absolutely sincere, not bribed or biased, but morally motivated forces which are ready to die to prevent the return of the former president to power.

Supporters of Saakashvili state that the mass of people “are intellectually unable to develop a legitimate program of actions.” However, the last events show that they are ready for self-organization and have sufficient resources to act on the streets, where the issue of power is determined according to the Georgian political tradition of the last 25 years.

The developments of March 21st confirmed this fact. The Interior Ministry strictly warned opponents of Saakashvili to stay away from Freedom Square, where the UNM was holding their meeting. However, they gathered near the building of Georgian Public Television, demanding it broadcast a film on “the bloody crimes committed by Saakashvili and his team during the awful nine years of their rule.”

When society has active groups which are ready to set a question in such a radical form, it can lead to serious consequences in case of a real attempt to overthrow power, even as a result of elections. Meanwhile, meetings against the former president are attended by prominent people who are experienced in hostilities and have contacts in the security structures. For example, there was the former governor of the Kodori Gorge in Abkhazia, Emzar Kvitsiani, who blames Saakashvili for the poor fate of the Svans – natives of the gorge, who became refugees. Another example is General Tristan Tsitelashvili, an active participant of the Georgian-Abkhazian war, who spent several years in jail and was amnestied by the new authorities.

The existence of such groups in a situation where the opposition is preparing for another revolution is flammable material for a civil conflict. However, at the moment they are only making juridical demands within the framework of the Constitution. For instance, the Unanimity Society organized a counter-meeting on March 21st and demanded that the parliament consider the UNM a criminal organization and adopt a law about it, holding a Nuremberg trial over them. Actually, they demand forbidding the party of Saakashvili’s supporters entirely, even though criminal cases have been initiated against almost all the leaders of the party. Not only the former president, but also the former Interior Minister Vano Merabaishvili, the former Defense Minister Bachana Akhalaya, and the former mayor of Tbilisi Gigi Ugulava have been imprisoned or are awaiting sentence.

Nevertheless, the UNM has a faction in the parliament, i.e. dozens of MPs who have immunity and hundreds of activists all over the country. That’s why radical opponents of the former president have a slightly naïve desire to solve the problem immediately – to ban the party as “a criminal organization which committed outrages against the Georgian nation.”

However, in the current political situation, considering the clear support for Saakashvili in the West, where he constantly meets top officials as an advisor of President Poroshenko and the the head of the International Consultative Council for Reforms, the initiative to ban the major opposition party in Georgia has no chance.

This doesn’t mean that the initiators of the idea and the social strata which are represented by them won’t play a key role, if Mikheil and his team take real steps to return in power. And they do have such a scenario. It was no accident that on March 21st they took the route which was chosen during the ‘Rose Revolution’ in 2003 – from Freedom Square to the State Chancellery, where the Georgian government worked.

 

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