Tag Archives: Georgia

Georgian Dream fights first election as party of government

TBILISI, SEPT. 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — A party of protest four years ago, the Georgian Dream coalition is now the party of power bringing with it all the challenges of a track record in government.

Georgia’s parliamentary election in October is proving to be a very different experience for Georgian Dream, its billionaire backer Bidzina Ivanishvili and his supporters who ousted the government of former President Mikheil Saakashvili in 2012. Back then they just had to pull in the sizable anti-Saakashvili vote.

Now they have to defend their own record.

Cotne, 37, was drinking in a bar in the old town of Tbilisi. He summed up the prevailing mood of ordinary Georgians. It’s been a glum couple of years, with the value of the lari sliding and economic conditions worsening.

“Although I did not like the Georgian Dream party at the beginning, I voted for the them as we needed a change,” he said of how he voted in 2012. “Right now there is nobody out there that I respect and would vote for.”

The election on Oct. 8 is mainly between the Georgian Dream and the remnants of Mr Saakashvili’s United National Movement party (UNM). They are bitter enemies, an attitude reflected in a raucous campaign with its emphasis on personalities rather than policies. At its core, the Georgian Dream is more pro-Russia than the UNM.

And the difficulties of defending a governmental record in a campaign dominated by personalities is playing against the Georgian Dream, the Tbilisi-based think tank, the Georgian Institute of Politics said earlier this month.

“A weak socio-economic programme without results, a devalued currency following the Russian rouble crash, pessimism about employment and the perception of rising crime after the amnesty for prisoners in 2013,”it said in a note.

“This drowns out the improvements in health care, justice and media freedom which causes the majority of the population to conclude the country is heading in the wrong direction and turning its back on the government.”

The Georgian Dream, at least officially, has also changed its front- man. Mr Ivanishvili served as PM for a year after winning the 2012 election. Now, though, he prefers to play the role of kingmaker.

Instead, PM Giorgi Kvirikashvili, heads the party list. He has only been PM since the start of the year and has a far lower profile than Mr Ivanishvili, who the electorate believe is still driving the Georgian Dream agenda.

Still, Georgian Dream officials exude confidence.

Levan Koberidze, a Georgian

Dream parliamentary candidate, praised the government. “We were able to bring real freedom in the country. During our rule, we maintained stability and kept the country safe, avoiding armed conflicts,” he said.

“Our policy and governance bears the best interests of Georgia and everything we have done during past four years gives us an advantage over our competitors.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 298, published on Sept. 30 2016)

Georgian Police arrest nationalists in Tbilisi after demo

TBILISI, SEPT. 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Police in Tbilisi arrested 11 men after they attacked Turkish cafes and people wearing Muslim clothes after a march by nationalists through the city.

According to reports, a group of men, some masked, gathered at Rustaveli metro station in the centre and walked through a small street with numerous cafes and foreign restaurants where they shouted “Glory to our nation, death to enemies” and attacked the cafes.

The interior ministry later released a statement which blamed a group called Georgian Power, linked to hooligans at Georgia’s biggest football team Dynamo Tbilisi.

Earlier this year, a group of nationalists threw sausages at diners in a Tbilisi vegan restaurant.

A few days after that another group of nationalists and ultraconservative Orthodox Christians disrupted an open air concert in Tbilisi, accusing the organisers of arranging mass orgies.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 298, published on Sept. 30 2016)

Comment: Georgia’s combustible election, writes Kilner

SEPT. 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — It was always going to get heated. Georgia’s parliamentary election descended into fighting this week when two opposing MPs traded punches during a live TV debate.

The surprise, perhaps, is that it has taken so long. Reports from Tbilisi have said that this has been one of the better-natured election campaigns in Georgia of recent years.

This parliamentary election campaign is a replay of the 2012 election when the Georgian Dream coalition, the party of billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, unseated the United National Movement party (UNM), the party of the then president Mikheil Saakashvili, in a bitter affair.

Since then the two parties haven’t stopped hurling insults at each other over human rights abuses and corruption. Fury has been building for four years. The policy differences and what each party represents — essentially the Georgian Dream is pro-Russia, pro-Church and pro-Ivanishvili; the UNM pro-West, pro-liberal and pro-Saakashvili — get lost in the fog of the battle and character assassinations that both sides have been dealing in.

Smaller parties generally form alliances with either the Georgian Dream or the UNM and buckle up for the ride.

At the apex of the storm two men are using the election to fight a Machiavellian encounter. Neither is actually standing in the election.

Ivanishvili is Georgia’s richest man. He pulls the strings at the Georgian Dream, deciding who will lead the party, and its policies.

Saakashvili, who dominated Georgian politics between 2003 and 2013, has been forced into exile, wanted by the Georgian prosecutors to stand trial on various accounts of financial wrongdoing. He is now governor of the Odessa region in Ukraine but there is little doubt he wields huge influence over the UNM His Dutch-born wife Sandra Roelofs, is standing as a candidate.

Ivanishvili and Saakashvili hate each other.

There are still eight days to go until the Oct. 8 election. They are going to be eight, tension-filled days with candidates focused on attacking one another, rather than debating the issues of the day — the state of the economy, relations with Russia and the West, civil rights, its rebel states of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

After the elections, perhaps there will be time for Georgian politics to reset.

By James Kilner, Editor, The Conway Bulletin

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(News report from Issue No. 298, published on Sept. 30 2016)

Party splits in Georgia

SEPT. 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A minor partner in the Georgian election coalition headed by Opera singer Paata Burchuladze, the State For The People, quit after a row over corruption allegations. Mr Burchuladze is a wildcard in the Oct. 8 election. He has no previous political experience but has been attracting a fair amount of goodwill from voters.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 298, published on Sept. 30 2016)

Money transfers to Georgia grow

SEPT. 16 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s Central Bank highlighted a growth in money transfers from abroad in August, $106m, up 25% compared to last year. Russia remains the largest country of origin of worker remittances, although transfers to Georgia declined. The US, Italy, Greece and Turkey have all grown in absolute terms, representing over 40% of all remittances in August.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 297, published on Sept. 23 2016)

UNM fight to shake off ex-Georgian President shadow to win over voters

TBILISI, SEPT. 23 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Next month’s parliamentary election in Georgia marks a new epoch for the United National Movement party (UNM). This is the first national election that it is fighting without its founder, former leader and most recognisable talisman — former Georgian President Mikheil Saakhashvili.

But this may not be a bad thing. Mr Saakashvili is a polarising figure and the mere mention of his name can make Georgians recoil. He lead a peaceful revolution in 2003 that saw the former Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze thrown from power as Georgia’s president. Mr Saakashvili was then president from 2004 until 2013. By that time, though, his reputation, and that of the UNM, had come full circle.

Mr Saakashvili had rebranded Georgia with a new flag, a new army ready to fight alongside NATO and a western oriented foreign policy. But he had also picked fights with Russia, and allegedly allowed abuses and beatings in Georgia’s prisons.

From a seemingly omnipotent position, the UNM had first lost a parliamentary election to the upstart Georgian Dream coalition in 2012 and then the presidential election in 2013. Mr Saakashvili has been forced into exile and is now the governor of the Odessa region in Ukraine.

But many voters in Tbilisi, think that he is still influencing the UNM.

Levani, a 27-year-old Tbilisi resident described the UNM as a “disgrace” which kept people under “police control and repression”.

“These days Saakashvili still has enormous influence on the UNM,” she said. “He manages to form the list of candidates for ballots, guide the activists for their provocations and generate low level international pressure to hit the image of the current government and undermine the elections.” Teona, a 25-year-old, agreed.

“They are still associated with Saakashvili and nobody has any question mark about that,” he said. “There are many new people in the UNM whom I might sympathise with but for me still they are affiliated with former regime and I don’t trust them.”

For Giorgi Kandelaki, a UNM MP, these are difficult times. He said that the decision-making progress within the party is now removed from Mr Saakashvili and that he was not trying to influence events from Odessa.

“Mr Saakashvili now is not giving any line to the party to follow. He can give advice and the party takes it on board or not,” he told The Conway Bulletin in an interview.

He did hint though that while Mr Saakashvili’s legacy was positive for the UNM’s core voters, different tactics were needed to attract new voters.

“For the voting base of the UNM, the figure of Saakashvili and his legacy is very positive. As far as concerns undecided voters, we are reaching out to this segment by bringing a lot of new faces into UNM”, he said.

The election is set for Oct. 9. The few opinion polls which have been published put the UNM and the ruling Georgian Dream coalition on level pegging.

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(News report from Issue No. 297, published on Sept. 23 2016)

Georgia condemns Russia on polling stations

SEPT. 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Georgian government condemned Russia’s use of polling stations in the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia for its parliamentary election on Sept. 18. Georgia’s foreign ministry said in a statement that the issuing of Russian passports to people in South Ossetia and Abkhazia breached Georgia’s sovereignty and was illegal.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 297, published on Sept. 23 2016)

Georgia’s court reinstates two parties for election

TBILISI, SEPT. 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Indicating just how fraught campaigning in Georgia has become ahead of a parliamentary election next month, a court in Tbilisi reversed an earlier decision by the Central Election Commission which had banned the Industrialist Party and the Our Homeland Party from the vote.

On Sept. 11, Tamar Zhvania, the Commission’s chairwoman, de-registered the two parties for submitting their party lists after the official dead- line had expired.

The Industrialists and Our Homeland appealed the decision and the Tbilisi court said that the Commission would now have to register the two parties for the upcoming parliamentary election on Oct. 8.

Both parties are staunchly pro- Russia and critics of former President Mikheil Saakashvili’s UNM party. Their reinstatement should boost the chances of another Georgian Dream coalition government being voted back into power.

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(News report from Issue No. 296, published on Sept. 16 2016)

New Georgian TV drama depicts prison torture under Saakashvili

TBILISI, SEPT. 14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Herokratia, a fictional TV series based on prison tortures and government crimes that occurred under the government of former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, started broadcasting on prime time television, barely a month before Georgians vote in an acrimonious and bad-tempered election.

In the series, Mr Saakashvili, who is now the governor of the Odessa region in Ukraine, is portrayed as a megalomaniac living a life of opulent luxury while beatings are handed out casually, and brutally, in prisons.

The producer Goga Khaindrava, is known as a vocal opponent of Mr Saakashvili.

He said it was important to document the abuse.

“The main idea of this film is for people to really acknowledge what kind of disaster we went through,” he was quoted by journalists as saying. “People don’t know what kind of hell some people went through.”

The series has been paid for by former PM Bidzina Ivanishvili, Georgia’s richest man and Mr Saakashvili’s sworn opponent, and is being broadcast on his son’s TV stations.

Mr Ivanishvili has previously commissioned documentaries on brutality in prison under Mr Saakashvili’s administration. The timing appears designed to undermine the remnants of his UNM party ahead of a parliamentary election in October.

Ketino, the owner of a bakery shop, said that during Mr Saakashvili’s period in power people lived in constant fear.

“It is necessary to show what this beast did, as it was necessary after WWII to show what the Fascists and the Nazis did in order not to forget,” she said.

Lasha, a 35 years old resident of Tbilisi, said the beatings were commonly known among people.

“Everybody knew what was going on in our prisons and still, the Americans sand the EU did nothing,” he said.

Mr Saakashvili is perceived in Georgia as being too pro-EU and US and too anti-Russia.

He was blamed for taking Georgia into a disastrous five-day war against Russia in 2008.

Investigations have shown that beatings did take place in prisons under Mr Saakashvili’s administration. Some officials have been imprisoned and the authorities have said that they want Mr Saakashvili to stand trial.

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(News report from Issue No. 296, published on Sept. 16 2016)

Georgia’s trade balance worsens

SEPT. 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s foreign trade balance worsened, as imports increased and exports decreased in the first eight months of 2016 compared to the same period last year, the Statistics Committee said. Exports fell by 10% to $1.3b, while imports rose to $6.1b, a 23% jump.

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(News report from Issue No. 296, published on Sept. 16 2016)