–The power behind Georgia’s government, Bidzina Ivanishvili, has started to employ the tactics once used by Mikheil Saakashvili to try to cling onto power, writes Will Dunbar

DEC. 9 (The Bulletin) — They say the only lesson we learn from history is that we never learn from history, and this certainly seems to be the case for Bidzina Ivanishvili, the neo-feudal ruler of Georgia.

Back in 2011 and 2012, Ivanishvili fought a bitter campaign against the increasingly unpopular government of Mikheil Saakashvili. Facing defeat, Saakashvili tried everything to stay in power, manipulating electoral laws and funding rules, demonising Ivanishvili and allies on regime-friendly broadcasters, and sending out teams of thugs to threaten and intimidate oppositionists trying to campaign in the regions. Ivanishvili’s coalition won the election with 54% of the vote.

Eight years later, and with a government even more unpopular than that of Saakashvili’s, Ivanishvili has dusted off his nemesis’s playbook in a likely-doomed attempt to save his tattered, wayward government.

Last month Ivanishvili set off protests when he backed down on a much-heralded promise of electoral reform designed to ensure that parliament represents the will of the voters.

The last election saw Ivanishvili’s party win 45% of the vote and 75% of the seats, which most people thought was unfair. Almost 80% of Georgians support changing the system, and Ivanishvili’s about-face unleashed paroxysms of anger.

As opposition demonstrations have gathered pace across the country they are increasingly met by crowds of athletic young men hurling bottles, eggs and broomsticks, a clear echo of the 2012 election and a tactic that did Saakashvili no favours in the end.

Just like in 2012, hyperventilating and sycophantic TV stations attempt to present the diverse opposition coalition as bringers of the apocalypse, claiming that only Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream party can save the country from civil conflict, even as that party fans the flames.
Ivanishvili is doomed to fail in this effort.

He has only two choices now. To properly steal next year’s election, mobilising his hired thugs to stuff ballot boxes and intimidate voters or to accept the will of the people, allow his pet party to be defeated at the polls and to begrudgingly relinquish power. Ultimately, arch-rival Saakashvili did the right thing and chose the second option in 2012, in what was Georgia’s first democratic transfer of power. Georgians hope that Ivanishvili can follow this example.
>> Will Dunbar is a Tbilisi-based journalist and analyst
ENDS

— This story was first published in issue 431 of the weekly Bulletin on Dec. 9 2019

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