By: Lance Hogben

Lance Hogben — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 09:02:56 +0000

Mari, I agree with your rebuttal of Gavin’s assessment of reasons for discontentment with Saakashvili. It is dangerously essentialist to speak of West & East since it obscures the real issues: Georgians are unhappy with the phoniness of the so-called revolution which has done nothing to bring any increased public participation in politics, but has simply substituted one corrupt, mildly authoritarian, not particularly pro-West ( US & UK) regime with another, more pro-US/UK, slightly less corrupt, more authoritarian and no more transparent than the last, that of Shevardnadze.
Saakashvili’s regime bears all the hallmarks of a sell-out NeoCon scheme of privatization on the backs of workers and the further erosion of civil life as macro-economics take precedent over the needs of the local economy. In a typically right-wing fashion, Saakashvili has put the squeeze on real growth of wages, creation of jobs and purchasing power to restructure the economy toward fully-prone position ready to take it any way the World Bank sees fit.
Of course, you can’t read it on the news, since networks are all owned by Misha’s party officers.
How is democracy possible anywhere the voices of the people are not intrinsically respected and sought out? I see nothing o fthis orientation arising from Tbilisi these days, just a more right-wing machination replacing the rump socialism of Shevardnadze. There is no discrenable growth of productivity, either capital and cultural and there will be none because it’s not part of the plan. Rather, Saakashvili is busying himself with rendering the country over to Big Oil and Western recolonization, under which he will get rich at the expense of the patrimony of a once great and still unique country. God save Georgia from the knives of the capitalists â€“ they won’t be any more sparing than the Bolsheviks and Muslims before them. I fear that there will be nothing much left of her culture after generations of regimes bent on obliterating it. Part of domestication of chattel is always the selective breeding-out of ‘wild’ traits. Purposeful neglect of the nation’s history and culture will produce a colorless internationalist cohort willing to sacrifice everything they don’t understand on the altar of their clique’s prosperity. Georgia has had no dearth of traitors in her long and tortuous history. Saakahvili’s bunch are no different.

By: mari

mari — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 23:18:21 +0000

Dear Sir,
I would like to comment on your evaluation of the developements in Georgia since the November 2003 events. I would disagree that the growing unpopularity of the president- or rather a decline in his initially huge popularity, is caused by him being too western for the ‘traditional’ Georgians. Rather, to me the reaction seems to be the disillusionment. The president dubbed the champion of democracy has largely turned to quite authoritarian means of rule (eg. the expropreation of property of the corrupt officials was a hugely popular move, but hardly withstanding any legal scrutiny; tightening the control of media; increase of human rights violations; the scandals of bugged phones that broke out earlier this week, etc.).
I would agree that democracy or consolidation of a liberal democratic system in Georgia is far from certain. Indeed, it is hard to emagine establishing a democracy without full adherence to the rules of the game.

Comments on: Ructions in Georgia

By: Lance Hogben

By: mari