The Irresistible of Rise of Misha Saakashvili

GEORGIA, 2001

Twilight of the Shevardnadze Era:

A New Beginning or Rejuvenation of the Regime ?

Resumé

Eduard Shevardnadze’s fall from grace has been sudden. For most of the last decade, the Georgian President has been lauded as a model democrat and reformer. His role as Soviet foreign minister at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Communism across the Eastern Bloc gave him a reputation which ignored his long years as the Kremlin’s placeman in charge of his native Georgia (1972-85) and viewed his seizure of power there after a military coup ten years ago through rose-tinted spectacles.

But now the love affair between Western governments and their favourite post-Soviet reformer seems to be cooling rapidly. Although in the eyes of this Group’s regular team of observers in Georgia nothing much has changed in the ten year decline in living standards and the ongoing combination of electoral fraud and police brutality, suddenly Western commentators who sang Shevardnadze’s praises as the model post-Communist saviour of his nation have detected that Georgia is a “failed state” mired in corruption, cronyism and a possible base for international terrorism.

Protests in the streets and parliamentary accusations have subjected the Shevardnadze regime to unparalleled scrutiny and put it on the defensive. Leading politicians have defected from the ruling party and called the President’s future into doubt. BHHRG sent four regular visitors to Georgia to assess the situation and to consider whether real change is now in the offing or merely a rejuvenation of the regime.

Recent Events

With average monthly incomes hardly more than 10% of their Soviet level and a growing part of society living at subsistence level outside the formal economy, especially outside the capital Tbilisi, it is not surprising that discontent with the regime is widespread. It has been there for the last decade as transition has meant the relentless rise of corruption and the fall of the standard of living.

In the past, public protest has been violently dispersed or intimidated by shows of Western-backed force such as the ostentatious appearance of U.S.- supplied Black Hawk attack helicopters over Tbilisi in the run up to the elections in 2000. This year, however, demonstrations have become increasingly routine in the capital and the police have failed to disperse them as they have in the past.

On 30th October, 2001, the most significant protest to date occurred in the streets of Tbilisi outside the Rustavi 2 TV station. Tax police accompanied by security officials had entered the independent TV station, which broadcast live the confrontation between its directors and state officials. A crowd gathered and the controversy about Rustavi 2 took on such dimensions that it led to the resignation in quick succession of the key, so-called “power ministers”, then of the Speaker of Parliament and, finally, the whole government. This necessitated repeated crisis-management by President Shevardnadze and the election of a new Speaker (the number two in the constitutional order) as well as a new cabinet.

However, this re-shuffle of the government does not seem to have ended the crisis. Vocal elements within Parliament and in the media and intelligentsia once closely associated with President Shevardnadze have continued their criticism. And, more troubles could be in store for the regime because other issues and controversies are gnawing away at its legitimacy. The unsolved murder of a young Rustavi 2 journalist, Giorgi Sanaia, in July has been connected to the existence of a video cassette which, allegedly, names officials involved in criminal activities like drug dealing with Chechen terrorists operating in the Pankisi Gorge on Russia's border. If the cassette's contents are made public - which many say will happen soon - the government's problems will only intensify.

To pile on the agony, Georgia is coming under regular attack from Moscow for failing to improve the security situation on its border with Chechnya. It is also alleged that Chechen guerrillas were transported by the Georgian authorities to attack the breakaway region of Abkhazia. At the end of November Georgian sources say the Pankisi gorge region was bombed by Russian aircraft, which Russia denies, though its difficult to imagine where else such aircraft could have come from.

It also seems that, for the first time in his long career Eduard Shevardnadze is losing the international support which enabled him to ride out the crisis of 1993, for instance. The IMF has been highly critical of the Georgian budget and demanded savage cuts. Along with other international donors and lenders, IMF officials have been caustic about the level of corruption among officials of the Shevardnadze regime. These criticisms have been taken up by young reformers among the elite, especially ex-Justice Minister, Mikheil Saakashvili, who have used populist gestures like showing photographs of expensive new houses built by officials on low salaries to pinpoint the President’s failure to reign in abuse of office.

An air of fin de regime hangs over Tbilisi. However, Shevardnadze’s departure from the political scene will not necessarily improve the lives of Georgia's impoverished population if all that is going on at the moment is a battle between elites, reminiscent of power struggles that took place in the Communist era. Generational change will only lead to younger members of the Georgian elite replacing their older comrades, and the younger generation could easily adopt the practices of their displaced elders. After all, no-one can live decently even by Georgian standards on the official salaries alone.

'Timeline' of events in Georgia following 9/11

It is now commonplace to acknowledge that the 11th September terrorist attacks had repercussions way beyond the boundaries of the United States. Georgia seems to be no exception.

17th September 2001: Shevardnadze resigned as leader of the ruling party, the Citizens Union. Commentators predict that the party would splinter into different factions. This it has done.

18th September: Russia's rhetoric over what it saw as Georgian collusion with Chechen guerrillas in the Pankisi gorge intensified. The Foreign Ministry in Moscow demanded that Russia and the OSCE should be allowed to inspect the area for "terrorists".

19th September: Mikheil Sakkashvili resigned as Minister of Justice. He appeared on independent Rustavi 2 TV saying it would be "immoral" for him to remain in a government that was doing so little to combat corruption. He also announced that he would seek re-election to parliament.

3rd October: Russia accused Georgia of having spirited Chechen fighters to the Kodori gorge in order to spearhead an attack against the breakaway region of Abkhazia. Rustavi 2 follows the story closely although there seem to have been no pictures of the guerrillas in question.

8th October: Tensions rose further when a UN helicopter was shot down in the Kodori gorge.

21st October: Vake by-election; Mikheil Sakkashvili elected to parliament

30th October: 2 tax police raid the premises of independent TV Rustavi 2; demonstrators gather to protest the interference outside the TV station.

31st October: Minister of State Security, Vakhtang Kutateladze resigns after the Rustavi episode as do Interior Minister, Kakha Tagarmadze and Chief Prosecutor, General Gia Meparishvili.

1st November: Parliamentary Chairman Zurab Zhvania resigns followed by the resignation of the entire government.

10th November: Election of a new chairman . Parliament sets about confirming the new ministers many of whom were in the former administration.

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Mission to Georgia, 2001

British Helsinki Human Rights Group representatives have visited Georgia regularly since 1992 and interviewed human rights activists, doctors, prisoners and refugees from all over the country. Their conclusions about the state of Georgia's human rights record, presented in a series of published reports, has been consistently negative. In January, 1999, BHHRG’s account of the appalling state of affairs in Georgia at every level was ignored by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe which voted to accept a country whose own officials admitted that every prisoner in the capital’s central prison was infected with TB.

In the light of the above developments BHHRG sent a group of monitors to investigate the situation in the republic. While there they interviewed various politicians including Elena Tevdoradze, Chairman of the Parliamentary Human Rights Committee, members of the Revival group of deputies, Irakli Kadagishvili, spokesman for National Democratic Party, Georgi Arveladze, spokesman for Mikheil Saakashvili, Nika Tabatadze, director of Rustavi 2, Levan Kubareishvili, spokesman for Georgian state television, David Usupashvili, IRIS Georgia Rule of Law Programme, Levan Berdzenishvili, director of Georgia National Library and the Civic Rights Development Oragnization, Levan Urashidze (IECERHRG), Jaba Ioseliani, Vaso Kapanadadze, Resonans newspaper, students from Tbilisi university, former members of the Gamsakhurdia government. They also visited Tskinvali, capital of the breakaway region of South Ossetia and observed the presidential election the first round of which took place on 18th November.

Background

Eduard Shevardnadze returned to Georgia in March, 1992 after the overthrow of the country's first democratically elected, post-Soviet president, Zviad Ghamsakhurdia in January, 1992. Shevardnadze's return was hailed in the West as something of a mission to save the newly-independent republic from the war and anarchy that had beset Ghamsakhurdia's presidency. After elections in October, 1992, in which Shevardnadze was the only candidate, he became head of state as Chairman of the Georgian parliament. Only parties which had backed the coup against Gamsakhurdia took part in the poll, but splits between them became apparent as they struggled over the spoils of office. The rivalry between the para-military Mkhedrioni mafia group and Giorgi Chanturia’s National Democratic Party who had spear-headed the uprising against Gamsakhurdia revolved around the control of the lucrative customs ministry. Murder became a routine way of resolving differences in what Western institutions like the OSCE and the U.S. State Department regarded as one of the most hopeful of post-Soviet states.

Despite allowing his Mkhedrioni allies to provoke and then lose two wars against regional separatists - in the coastal province of Abkhazia and the northern region of South Ossetia - Shevardnadze went on to be elected president in 1995 under a new constitution. His political supporters had formed a party in 1993 (the Citizens Union) that won a majority of seats in parliamentary elections also held that year (1995). Similarly, in 1999 the Citizens Union topped the poll and Shevardnadze himself was re-elected president in 2000 for the second time - or third, depending on one's understanding of his original role as Speaker. The Georgian constitution only permits a holder of the post to serve two terms. Nowadays even officials of the Georgian election commission at the time admit that these polls were deeply flawed by fraud (as reported by the BHHRG’s observers though denied or glossed over by the OSCE and Council of Europe’s observer missions).

But nearly ten years after Shevardnadze came to power there is very little to show for his time in office - other than a plethora of prizes and awards from foreign organizations and regular state visits to gracious and admiring hosts like Britain's Queen Elizabeth and all three US presidents in office at the same time. On 23rd September, 1999, President Shevardnadze received the W. Averill Harriman Democracy Award for the progress in building an independent, democratic state in Georgia from the U.S. National Democratic Institute. 1998’s winner, President Clinton, eulogised Shevardnadze who “had taken to democracy with the zeal of a convert.” “Once he decided to believe, he stayed hitched,'' Clinton said. ``This man has stayed the course when the price was high.'' (Mrs Hilary Rodham Clinton also received an award at the same NDI ceremony emphasizing how closely Shevardnadze was associated with the First Family.) Not since Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu was lauded by Queen Elizabeth II and the residents of the White House in the 1970s and 1980s has the fulsome rhetoric of Western leaders about an Eastern ruler contrasted with the harsh realities of life in his own domain.

However, nearly ten years on, the breakaway regions are still out of Tbilisi's control with over c.250,000 refugees, mainly from Abkhazia, living in squalid, makeshift accommodation. The economy is in free-fall as factories and enterprises have long shut down. An energy crisis means vast swathes of the country are cut off from heat and light throughout the winter months. By the side of the main Tbilisi-Batumi highway there is evidence of the wholesale destruction of orchards and woods, cut down to provide fuel for local inhabitants. Running water is an intermittent luxury, even in the cities. Relations with Georgia's northern neighbour, Russia, are, to say the least, uncomfortable. Meanwhile, people gather in the lobby of parliament begging for help in a scene reminiscent of the middle ages when the King was petitioned to cure the suffering from scrofula.

As if in anticipation of further criticism, Shevardnadze appeared open to change. He talked about creating the post of prime minister and appointed an anti-corruption commission in the Spring, 2001 headed by the youthful minister of justice, Mikheil Saakishvili. BHHRG was told that the president had enjoyed a somewhat uncomfortable visit to Washington in October 2001 when he was tackled by administration officials for not doing enough to combat corruption in Georgia. Apparently, the Americans felt somewhat aggrieved as they had helped fund the anti-corruption activities of Saakishvili et al. without any noticeable results.

Straws in the Wind

There was a marked change in tone following the presidential election in 2000 even though Shevardnadze’s Georgia had only recently received one of the West’s marks of approval - accession to the Council of Europe with a seat for a Georgian judge on the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Suddenly, the OSCE’s election monitors issued a report which was sharply critical of the poll which it claimed was unfairly skewed in Shevardnadze's favour [www.osce.org/odhir] BHHRG observers concurred with the charges but were puzzled by the fact that even though the same type of abuses were evident the year before in the 1999 Parliamentary elections and, in fact, in 1992 and 1995, when many of the same personnel were active in the OSCE mission, the OSCE had given positive assessments of equally flawed elections. After all, not only was the same candidate head of the poll but the same team was running the Central Election Commission. This suggests that something other than observable facts on the ground in Georgian polling stations was behind the OSCE’s shift in attitude towards President Shevardnadze’s democratic legitimacy.

During the same period, various key academics and journalists in the West began to criticize Georgia for its economic and social policies. At the top of their list of complaints was 'corruption' among the ruling elite around the president. Despite a decade of near universal approval, Georgia, it suddenly emerged, was a 'failed state'. However, direct criticism of Shevardnadze himself in the Western media is still qualified by expressions of gratitude for his past services. Interviewed by the Christian Science Monitor, Anatol Lieven of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace reminded readers that the president had "saved Georgia"1 while Charles King in the National Interest was quick to point out "it is undeniable that Shevardnadze's return to Georgia helped save the country from ever greater tragedy".2 However, BHHRG have always found that outside the magic circle of Tbilisi's Western-educated elite (often the children of powerful Soviet-era apparatchiks) ordinary Georgians regarded Shevardnadze's return to their country as a great tragedy.

It is probably true to say that Georgia's Western sponsors were becoming increasingly uneasy about the succession to Shevardnadze. The President is now in his early seventies. Should he suddenly die or become incapacitated a vacuum could appear that might be filled by politicians less helpful to the West's agenda. Confusion over the succession, whatever the much-flouted Georgian Constitution might say, could open the way to chaos or a non-Western sponsored candidate gaining power. The sea-change in Western attitudes to Shevardnadze now seen as a lame-duck is illustrated by the growing support among the international community for 'reformist' members of the parliament grouped around its Speaker (1995-2001), Zurab Zhvania, who has gone from Shevardnadze stalwart to dissident.

What underpins the West's agenda in Georgia, as elsewhere in the Caucasus and Central Asia, can be summed up in one word - energy. Early oil from the Caspian is already, albeit slowly, transiting Georgia to Western markets. Plans for a pipeline to take a heavier production load from Baku via Supsa (Georgia) to Ceyhan (Turkey) await strategic investments. However, a more promising energy source emerged in 1999 when a large gas deposit was found in the Caspian and became known as the Shah Deniz project. Plans soon developed for a pipeline to transit this along a route parallel to the still undeveloped Baku-Ceyhan route. If this scheme succeeded not only would Western markets, like Turkey, be less dependent on Russian gas but Georgia itself would (theoretically) benefit financially.

While there is little love lost between some elements of the Russian establishment and Shevardnadze Moscow has, until recently, kept an arms length relationship with Georgia. Although they helped the Abkhaz rebels defeat Georgia in a bloody war between 1992-3 the Russians have abided by their commitments to withdraw from their military bases there, including at Gadauta in Abkhazia itself. While Georgia has remained in the CIS it entered into a separate Western-sponsored security arrangement (GUUAM) with other ex-Soviet republics and President Shevardnadze had even talked about joining NATO in the near future in September, 1999, though in 2001 he has talked of “neutrality” as his preferred option for Georgia suggesting a shift away from the West.

This course correction may have a lot to do with the souring of Georgia’s relationship with the Russian government which has criticized Georgia for allowing Chechen rebels to train and regroup in the northern Pankisi Gorge region close to the Chechen border since the resumption of war between the Kremlin and Chechnya in September, 1999. Shevardnadze has responded by claiming that any Chechens in the region are refugees and that no one in Georgia is supporting guerrillas. As the summer of 2001 wore on the tone from Moscow began to sharpen considerably and Russian demands that its two other military bases at Batumi and Akhalkalaki should be kept open for another 14 years began to receive a more sympathetic hearing in Tbilisi than was previously the case. At the end of November 2001 the Georgian side alleged that Russian aircraft had bombed villages in the Pankisi gorge region.

The energy factor: AES Telasi

Georgia has been crippled by energy shortages and cuts in supply since independence. Gas comes from Russia but the eventual owners of distribution networks within Georgia remains to be settled with US and Russian companies jockeying for power. The Arlington-based US electrical company AES Telasi already distributes electricity to the Tbilisi area where it operates in an uncertain and unsatisfactory environment, partly because of interruptions to the supply of Russian gas to its generators (though other problems have repeatedly hit electricity generation by the company).

Evidence of the unsatisfactory provision of electricity to the capital came ironically in a supplement to the Financial Times dedicated to Georgia.3 Writing about the “Microfinance “Bank of Georgia (MBG)”, Anthony Robinson noted, “Typically…. borrowers need about $1,000 to buy a generator to ensure light and heat during frequent power cuts.”

Nonetheless, Anthony Robinson could write about the “US-based energy company” AES: “For Georgia, AES stands out as one of the small number of successful strategic investors. In Tbilisi it is prominent enough to have direct access to the political leadership, an important element in its success. Throughout the post-Soviet world, modernising the power distribution and generation industries is a vital task requiring large investment. In most places the task has hardly begun. In Georgia it is well on its way.”4 Despite the article’s title, “US investor helps warm the nation”, it quoted Michael Scholey, the man running AES-Telasi, as saying: “I’m afraid winter will be hard again… and we won’t be able to guarantee full supply, even though metering will cut demand.”5

AES-Telasi has required consumers in Tbilisi to buy new meters, which many cannot afford, but, according to the Financial Times, these “new meters make it… easy for Telasi to recognise and cut off non-payers. As a result, Mr Scholey counts himself among the most hated men in Tbilisi.”6

Difficulties over non-payment and the sudden unwillingness of the Georgian government to sell further franchises to AES-Telasi to operate the electricity system in other parts of the country, apparently led the U.S. corporation headquarters to consider abandoning the Georgian operation. However, US State Department pressure encouraged the company not to abandon energy generation in Georgia to Russian or local companies. Georgian observers also told BHHRG that the US government had extended $5m. to AES Telasi to encourage it to remain in the country.

Moreover, a source familiar with the operations of AES Telasi told the BHHRG observers that because of the wide profit margin guaranteed by the original agreement between the Georgian regime and the Arlington-based corporation, AES-Telasi ought to be profitable provided it can cut off non-payers who may number 70% of the population. In practice, because of the arcane nature of the Soviet wiring system very often even subscribers who have paid their bills are cut off because it is impossible for AES-Telasi to distinguish between payers and non-payers in many apartment complexes.

AES-Telasi’s “direct access to the political leadership” which ignored its impoverished electorate’s inability by and large to pay a market-price for electricity has led to a whispering campaign against the company and the politicians who agreed to the original contract. If Georgia underwent political upheaval, a popular and populist measure would be for a new government to abrogate the deal.

The AES advertisement on page I of the FT supplement7 claims, “The ultimate test of AES’s purpose is to serve the world’s need for electricity, for light and maybe even a little hope…” Naturally when it comes to choosing between its shareholders and its impoverished customer base, AES-Telasi prefers to cut electricity to its customers rather than its dividend.

The major personalities and groups in the present crisis are:

Eduard Shevardnadze:
Members of BHHRG have occasionally mulled over the possibility that the West might fall out of love with the president of Georgia one day. After all in the last few years, several statesmen, once feted in Washington, have eventually found themselves cold-shouldered. For example, Albania's former president, Sali Berisha was promoted as a strong ally of the US until 1996 when his downfall was actively sought by the State Department. Leonid Kuchma was referred to as the "Bismark of the Ukraine" by one Western sycophant, a description that, nevertheless, once reflected Kuchma's reputation in the US. And, in 1998, several months after having been called "the soaring eagle of freedom" by Richard Armitage, (now deputy US Secretary of State) , Azerbaijan's president Haidar Aliyev faced a hostile international community in his re-election bid that October.

But Shevardnadze was different. American politicians from both parties have counted him not only as a reliable partner but also as something of a personal friend despite the fact that none of those involved can speak to one another in the same language. In the early nineties Shevardnadze was already involved in business arrangements with former Secretary of State, George Schultz. His many international prizes will also have netted him a large sum of money.

Therefore, it comes as something of a shock to find Western-educated members of the Georgian political elite now in opposition to Mr. Shevardnadze criticizing him for being too pro-Russian. Georgi Arveladze, Mikheil Saakashvili's advisor, told BHHRG that the president was now too old to be an effective leader and that members of his corrupt family/clan were suffocating him and preventing him from taking rational decisions. He also said that fugitive businessman, Badri Patarkatsishvili a right-hand man of Boris Berezovski, was active in Georgia trying to buy up the media and gain influence in parliament.

Shevardnadze, according to Arveladze, supported men like Citizens Union MP, Vazha Lortkipanidze, former Georgian ambassador to Moscow. It was "Russian intelligence services" that came up with the candidature of Lortkipanidze for chairman of parliament during November's election to the post. Patarkatsishvili financed his campaign offering bribes to members of parliament for their votes. Arveladze also named former Interior Minister, Kakha Tergamadze and Ajarian leader, Aslan Abashidze as having Russian intelligence connections and helping the Russians gain influence in the country.

Arveladze also criticized the president for "lobbying" on behalf of the Russian gas company ITERA against the wishes of the US. Various people claimed that Shevardnadze had appeared on Georgian TV acting as a lobbyist for ITERA. However, interviewed by BHHRG, Levan Kubaneishvili head of information for channels 1 and 2 at Georgian state TV said that the president had made no such claims. Arveladze said that the US energy company, AES Telasi "the only large US investor in Georgia" was opposed to buying its supplies from the Russians.

The conclusion of all this was obvious: Shevardnadze was leaning more in the direction of corrupt, pro-Russian ministers which has led the West to start promoting "the young democrats". It should be stated that Arveladze's views were at the extreme poll of the forces opposing Mr. Shevardnadze. David Usupashvili and Elena Tevdoradze, head of the Parliamentary Human Rights Commission, were both more nuanced in their approach to the president. Usupashvili was exercised about the constitutional problems of moving beyond the Shevardnadze era - he thought the local elections scheduled for next spring would be a suitable time to bring things to a head. Mrs. Tevdoradze too wanted to see constitutional norms abided by. But, all the reformers seemed to be united in their belief that the president's days are probably numbered and that Georgia should move towards reconstituting itself as a parliamentary republic.

The Opposition to Shevardnadze's regime:
This consists of groups both in and outside parliament. They are united by their past service to Shevardnadze. The Citizens Union has split into 3 factions, the main group consists of 47 'reformers' who followed Zurab Zhvania into opposition after he resigned as Chairman of Parliament on 1st November. Mikheil Saakashvili is, nominally independent (according to some sources) but leans towards Zhvania's group. His advisor Georgi Arveladze says he plans to set up his own political party in the future. The other two groups - Support and Alliance for Georgia - still back the president. The reformist members of the Citizens Union want to change Georgia's constitution and make the country a parliamentary republic with a figurehead president.

They still lack the two third majority necessary for parliament to bring about changes to the constitution. However, the reformers can probably rely on two other parties in the parliament for support. Both the Traditionalists and Industrialists voted with Zhvania's group to elect the new parliamentary Chairman , Nino Burjunadze with 190 votes on 10th November. Nino Burjunadze has a familiar ‘reformer’s’ pedigree: her father was a senior Komsomol official and city and regional party committee head for many years before becoming Soviet Georgia’s Minister of Bread Production.

Leading opposition figures all agree that there must be change and that the president should go, but there seems to be some disagreement about how and when. Some people want a change brought about by 'people power' others want constitutional niceties abided by. Yet others point to the local elections scheduled for the coming Spring as the time to act.

The Russians:
As this report is written, opposition to the regime in Tbilisi also includes, although in a different, non-domestic context, Russia whose rhetoric and provocative statements have intensified since 11th September. In spite of Georgi Arveladze's allegations that Eduard Shevardnadze had become too cosy with politicians connected to Russian oligarchs the press in Moscow accuses him of giving aid and comfort to Chechen guerrillas. The president compounded the problem by apparently saying on Rustavi 2 TV that Ruslan Gelaev a leading Chechen commander, allegedly 'protected' by Shevardnadze, was "an intelligent man".

This would all, no doubt, be explained as perfectly logical by the Saakashvili camp as Shevardnadze and his cohorts are dealing with those members of the Russian oligarchy out of favour with the Kremlin i.e. Berezovski end co. But that may not entirely explain the hostility, which seems to intensify by the day. In a provocative article published in the Russian journal Argumenti I Fakti at the end of November Shevardnadze was castigated for his 'treacherous' relations with the West, pre-dating the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Zviadists:
For the past 10 years the most dedicated group of oppositionists to the Shevardnadze regime have been followers of former president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia. However, these people have never posed any serious threat to the authorities in Georgia for a variety of reasons. Firstly, although they lack arms and foreign sponsors, they have regularly been accused by the authorities of participating in various plots to overthrow the regime. This has led to the frequent imprisonment of Zviadist activists, and, in many cases, they have been tortured and maltreated. In recent months many of these people have been released although reportedly c. 200 still remain in custody.

Since the mysterious death of Zviad Gamsakhurdia on New Year’s Eve, 1993, there has been much quarreling between the various Zviadist groups often ending with expulsions from this or that faction. The return to Tbilisi of Gamsakhurdia's widow, Manana in 1998 has only served to polarize the followers of her husband even further because she has assumed his mantle but many of the surviving politicians who supported him do not regard her as the appropriate successor.

This in-fighting became even more intense when some Zviadists decided to contest the parliamentary elections in 1995 which purists regarded as illegal and therefore as a betrayal of the former president's ideals. In the election held in 2000 there was more controversy as some of them joined forces with the Adjaran based party of Aslan Abashidze (Revival) and on the coat tails of his party list gained seats in parliament.

However, the Zviadists for all their integrity (even because of it) have never stood a chance of unseating the regime. The propaganda that labelled the late president as a 'nationalist' and 'fascist' - even bizarrely as a Russian agent - meant that no Western support or funding was ever directed to his supporters. The approval of Washington and the European Union has been essential to success in Georgian public life because without it access to the honey pots of IMF, EBRD and general Western aid (the only real sources of wealth in Georgia) has been impossible. To a great extent, therefore the real opposition - to judge by its number of political prisoners - has been marginalized by Western “democrats”, not least because Western human rights NGOs are generally funded by the same governmental sources as provide aid to states like Georgia.

While some former supporters now take a pragmatic view that since the death of Gamsakhurdia they must confront the regime officially by taking part in elections and forming a united opposition party, if only to reveal the fraudulent nature of elections in Georgia, others still sit in cold, dirty offices rejecting the iniquities of Mr. Shevardnadze and any participation in his system. Such have been the sufferings and isolation of ordinary Georgians, including the opposition since 1991, that their psyche has been distorted by their fate and now their hostility to the president is so all-encompassing that they could lend their support to any challenger to his regime without thinking through in whose interests such opposition might lie.

BHHRG interviewed several members of the Zviadist movement in November 2001. They said that socio-economic conditions in Georgia today were so bad that more than half the population were nostalgic for the days when they had jobs, pensions and electricity under Soviet rule. They suggested that the anti-Shevardnadze demonstrations were carefully staged and calibrated to avoid genuine popular participation because the population at large could easily move beyond the approved reformist slogans to denounce old and young reformers alike. Western media ignore the pro-Russian opposition, but even lifelong nationalists like many Zviadists admit that the “objective” effect of the degradation of life since 1992 has been to promote support for re-union with Russia (something they see as Mr. Shevardnadze’s long term goal.

Aslan Abashidze and the Revival Party:
The Group's representatives visited Adjara in 1999 and interviewed its president, Aslan Abashidze. Mr. Abashidze comes from a distinguished Adjaran family and enjoys a great deal of local respect because of his background which has enabled him to entrench himself as the region’s political boss with a finger in every pie, political and economic. Abashidze surrounds himself with bodyguards but explains these measures by arguing that he is only defending himself as attempts have been made on his life by the Shevardnadze apparat. Certainly it is true that whatever charges have thrown against Abashidze by Shevardnadze’s admirers in the West, there is a stark contrast between the cleanliness, order and relative prosperity of Adjara and its capital, Batumi compared with the environmental and social disaster that is today's Georgia. Anyone driving for six to eight hours from Tbilisi to Batumi cannot help being struck by the number of electricity-free towns and villages before arriving in Adjara where street lights greet the weary traveller from Tbilisi.

Abashidze's achievements are recognized by ordinary Georgians and his party, Revival gained 25.18% of the vote in the 1999 elections in spite of the fact that it received next to no media access outside Adjara itself. However, OSCE and Council of Europe monitors alleged that election arrangements in Adjara were the one 'black spot' in the conduct of the poll. BHHRG found the complete opposite: order and transparency in Adjara; chaos in polling stations in Georgia proper.

Even if criticism of Shevardnadze has grown over the past 18 months, Western commentators and politicians have echoed the voices of “official” reformers in Tbilisi stating that Mr. Abashidze will have no part to play in any future change of regime in Georgia. He is allegedly close to Russia which is presented as a “bad thing” for Georgia though recently senior Westerners like NATO Secretary-General Lord George Robertson have praised Putin’s Russia and Tony Blair’s official spokesman called the Russian President “a very close friend.” It seems acceptable for President Bush to call Vladimir Putin his 'close friend' while the West expects everyone else to be anti-Russian.

Under pressure from his former protégées in the reform camp, Mr. Shevardnadze has been making overtures to his previous enemies. There was alarm in Tbilisi when the president visited Abashidze in Batumi early in November and suggested he mediate in the Abkhaz dispute. There was even more alarm when it was rumoured that Abashidze had been offered the job of prime minister should the post be created in the near future. In fact, the main effect of these rumours was to promote unease and suspicion of Abashidze's motives. Quite probably they undercut his support (even if untrue) and certainly any move to the capital would undermine his natural power base in Adjara and could mean that the authorities could arrange for Revival to lose many of its seats in the Georgian parliament if or when early elections are held. This would not necessarily reflect the wishes of ordinary Georgians, of course.

The 'Young Reformer' - Mikheil Saakashvili:
The reformers supported by the West are all former members of Shevardnadze's Citizens Union. For some time, the favourite among them and the preferred successor seemed to be Zurab Zhvania who was Speaker of Parliament until his resignation on 1st November. Zhvania has been visiting the US and Europe for several years now trumpeting the virtues of Georgia's democratic progress which he has claimed in the past relied heavily on Mr. Shevardnadze's "decisive leadership".8 For some reason, Zhvania does not seem to have been marked down as the heir apparent to the president. Perhaps this is because there are rumours of corruption even in his c v. Also, if the aim is to get the former Zviadist groups 'on message' his participation in the militia activities that overthrew the former president would count against him.

However, in the course of the past year another, more telegenic candidate, has emerged as the crown prince: 33 year-old Mikheil Saakashvili. Saakashvili, like many young Georgian politicians, has been groomed in the US where he worked for the New York law firm Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler. In 1998 New York Times journalist Stephen Kinzer obligingly wrote a fawning profile of the Wunderkind9: "he is a superstar of Georgian politics", "while managing to be a "completely Western-orientated guy" who, "after nightfall ... is more likely to be found either at the Metropolitan Opera or cheering for the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden," Saakashvili is "hugely admired". And, best of all, Saakashvili “often rates as the second most popular person in Georgia, trailing only Shevardnadze" [our emphasis). This assessment of public standings in Georgia shows how out of touch public opinion polling (usually by Western-sponsored agencies) has become with real opinion. Of course, ordinary Georgians know what Westerners and Western-backed agencies want to hear and understand that it is wise to repeat what they are expected to say, or face the consequences in their corrupt and violent system.

Saakashvili entered parliament in 1999 as a Citizens Union deputy but resigned a year later, in October 2000, when Shevardnadze named him Minister of Justice, an appointment widely praised for its boldness. Saakashvili had already started to complain about corruption in the higher echelons of Georgian public life. In Spring 2001, the president approved the formation of a corruption commission to examine allegations like these and Saakishvili seems to have become something of a hero in the Georgian parliament, even among some opposition Revival members, for raising sensitive matters like the illegal purchasing of houses, flats etc. by government employees. However, on 14th August, 2001 Shevardnadze expressed his disapproval of Saakashvili's bill which demanded that officials account for their financial circumstances saying that it "offended against the presumption of innocence".

Saakashvili resigned as Minister of Justice on 19th September claiming that the corruption investigation had stalled and that he considered it "immoral" to remain in the government. He cited the stalling over his corruption bill - even though Shevardnadze's misgivings had been reported a month earlier and, anyway, no bill had at that stage been introduced into parliament. His decision to resign was also broadcast to the public in a live interview on Rustavi 2 TV during which he also announced that he was going to seek re-election to parliament in the Vake district of Tbilisi.

Strangely enough, for such a vibrant democracy, the seat had remained unfilled after Saakashvili's move to the Ministry of Justice in October 2000. Irakli Kadagishvili spokesman for Irina Sarashvili-Chanturia who was another candidate in the Vake by-election, pointed out to BHHRG that no satisfactory explanation had been put forward for this gap between Mr Saakashvili’s resigning his seat and his decision to re-fight it a year later.

Mr. Kadagishvili made accusations about electoral fraud. However, during their visit to Tbilisi in November, 2001 BHHRG representatives did not hear the same account of the election from Vake residents. It is perfectly reasonable for Saakashvili to have won the seat as the district in question covers one of the most desirable residential areas in central Tbilisi, inhabited by many members of the nomenklatura. Saakashvili seems to have received substantial funding for his election campaign either from moneyed interests in Georgia, the West or probably a mixture of both. Large glossy posters were still evident around the Vake district several weeks after the campaign ended.

No doubt, Saakashvili was being groomed for stardom - at least, by Georgia's most important Western friend, the United States. A biography was published with photographs of him meeting the great and good including George Soros and Senators John McCain and Edward Kennedy, as well as Attorney-General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Louis Freeh There were also a few nods in the direction of the locals with a sprinkling of pictures of the Patriach, Ilya II, as well as various members of the public - old and young – paying homage. Also included, to add to the allure, is a photograph of Mr. Saakashvili’s attractive, Dutch-born wife, Sandra.

However, it is not clear exactly when the push to install him in higher office was going to be made. What seems clear from the chronology of events is that it suddenly became urgent for Mikheil Saakishvili to be thrust into the limelight within days of the 11th September attacks in New York.

Attack on the media: the events of 30th October at Rustavi 2 television station

Rustavi 2 TV Georgia's leading independent television station was founded originally in 1997 in the town bearing its name. It is also an internet and international call provider. The company operates from the 14th floor of a high rise building on the outskirts of Tbilisi and appears to be well-funded. It is a slick operation transmitting between 16-18 hours per day and far outshines Georgian state television in the quality of presentation and programming. Rustavi's director, 26-year-old Nika Tabatadze, explained that the station is funded by advertising although its finances are also underpinned by the more profitable internet side of the business.

He also told BHHRG that in the summer 2001 an associate of Boris Berezovski, Badri Patarkatsishvili, had tried to buy Rustavi but the directors had turned down the deal. A lot is made of the role of Patarkatsishvili in Georgian public life - the insinuation being that he is connected with politicians close to the president, like Vazha Lortkipanidze. However, Berezovski has fallen out with the Putin administration and a warrant is out for his arrest. It is, therefore, unlikely that official circles in Moscow support Patarkatsishvili. On ..November Russia demanded his extradition from Tbilisi.

Rustavi 2 has become renowned in Georgia for its investigative work, in particular the programme “60 Minutes” which has exposed wrongdoing and corruption in the highest echelons in Georgian political circles as well as Georgia's involvement with Chechen guerrillas in the Kodori Gorge at the Abkhaz border. The station was the first to report the story that Chechen guerrillas were being transferred there by units of the Ministry of Interior. According to Tabatadze the station has received threats after these and other exposes were transmitted. In July 2001, Georgi Sanaia, one of Rustavi's leading journalists and a presenter of 60 Minutes was killed allegedly for his exposes of the connection between the state security organs and criminal activities, including drug smuggling in the Pankisi region. Tabatadze went as far as claiming that "the government was involved in the murder of Sanaia"

Tabatadze claims that Georgia's economy is in the hands of 3 or 4 families (including the Shevardnadzes) which control everything: energy, telecommunications and transit of oil. Meanwhile, the Ministry of the Interior controls all profitable businesses including cigarettes, oil and banks.

On the afternoon of 30th October security officers came to Rustavi's offices with a court order accusing the station of tax evasion and of having sold $600,000 of advertising space in May alone. The station had only recently had a tax inspection which had revealed no wrongdoing but the inspectors demanded to examine the records and take documents away for examination. Takabadze refused.

It was 3.00 pm in the afternoon and the whole incident was broadcast live on Rustavi. Soon afterwards anything between 5,000 and 10,000 people according to Takabadze started to gather outside the building to demonstrate against what was seen to be an attack on media freedom - including various political figures, actors, sportsmen and students. Next day, the demonstrators moved to the parliament demanding the resignation of the Minister of Security Kotateladze. He resigned the following day as did the entire government.

According to Takabadze, In its early days Rustavi had received some funding (about £30,000) from USAID and the Open Society but that has since ceased. However, some people say that the station is supported - albeit discretely - by Western money. Takabadze admitted that Western diplomats, who he meets on a regular basis, have a "good understanding" of what is going on in Georgia. Presumably, he is echoing their sentiments when he says that "young reformers" are needed and that Shevardnadze won't last until the next election. Takabadze himself looks forward to the day when these things come to pass and he is able to go to England where he has been awarded one of the UK Foreign Office’s most prestigious award, a Chevening Scholarship, to read law at London University.

Human Rights Groups:

Levan Berdzenishvili, Director of the National Library: Mr. Berdzenishvili runs the Civic Rights Development Organization from his offices in the National Library, a building whose faded glory is best expressed by the overall stench of urine that pervades the whole building from its unlit, subterranean lavatories.

Berdzenishvili praised Rustavi 2 for its independence and the quality of its programming. He drew the Group’s attention to the Sanaia Case. He said that Giorgi Sanaia was “the best representative of Rustavi 2… He could talk to all parties.” He thought it was dangerous to broadcast programmes like Sanaia’s “60 Minutes” because such investigative reporting could lead to reprisal killings by unhappy subjects. Sinaia had been shot at close range in his apartment on the morning of 27th July, 2001, by someone Berdzenishvili took to be a “professional killer". At the time Sanaia was reporting on events in Pankisi Gorge "on links between the police in Tbilisi, the Georgian government and Pankisi"

Berdzenishvili also said that rumours were circulating about the existence of a cassette with information about connections between Chechens and the Georgian government with names of employees in the Ministry of the Interior and connections to the drug trade. He also said that Elena Tevdoradze had a copy of the tape which would be available in a few weeks.

Mr. Berdzenishvili echoed Nika Takabadze in predicting that Mr. Shevardnadze had only "2 or 3 months to go" and that "big demonstrations will take place.

After the interview BHHRG joined Mr. Berdzenishvili at a meeting held in the basement of the Library by local human rights NGOs, chaired by Liberty Institute. It was pointed out to BHHRG that one member of the three man panel had worked for the Mkhedrioni paramilitary group at one time and that another participant in the meeting (Irakli Melaschivili) was a lobbyist for the US energy firm, AES Telasi. He, and others who addressed the meeting, updated the audience on the latest human rights violations in the country. They were particularly exercised by reports of a shooting incident involving pro-regime MP, Levan Pirveli in a Tbilisi restaurant on the night of 10th November. BHHRG saw Melaschvili interviewed about the incident later that evening on Rustavi TV. It later came to light that Pirveli had led the opposition in parliament to the appointment of Davit Mirtskhulava as energy minister in the new government because of his perceived conflict of interest as a lobbyist himself for AES.10 Perhaps the incident involving Pirveli had not been as straightforward as first reported.

Student Groups

During their previous visits to Georgia, BHHRG representatives have seen no public expression of student unrest. Public demonstrations that have taken place over the past 10 years have tended to be organized by disaffected Zviadist groups. These demonstrations have often been broken up violently by the police and, no doubt, for that reason as well as the general hopelessness of the cause, such gatherings are never well - attended. However, the events at Rustavi 2 may have changed all that. Students from various campuses attached to Tbilisi University were quick to rally to the beleaguered station's cause.

In order to find out if this marked the beginning of a more active stance BHHRG interviewed several students from Tbilisi University who have been instrumental in organizing protests. The students had their own gripes about the problem of corruption in Georgia, namely, the bribes demanded by faculty members for admission, to Tbilisi university - $10,000 for a place at the international law faculty, for instance - and the further payments of money demanded by corrupt professors to ensure a student passed his/her exams with acceptable grades. They claimed that there was a shortage of books for their courses which, anyway, needed to be modernized: they wanted to abandon the study of "irrelevant" subjects - like aesthetics and ethics - in favour of business studies.

Shevardnadze had visited the university after the demonstrations in an attempt to regain the students' trust but "he didn't answer any of their questions". They "preferred Saakashvili", someone of “our generation”, and felt that if they extended their protests "Westerners living in Tbilisi would support them". Although there was little activity in their office that day, we were assured that they would mobilize and demonstrate in large numbers again if and when the moment arose.

It was disappointing to note that none of these students showed any interest in the human rights violations that had taken place in their country over the past ten years or in the plight of the poor and homeless, not least, the thousands of refugees many of whom live on their doorstep in squalid hotel accommodation in central Tbilisi. Other refugees compete with out of Tbilisi students for accommodation in the university’s grim halls of residence while the children of the capital’s elite can live relatively comfortably at home with their parents. While those students themselves who were interviewed may have gained access to Tbilisi university through their own hard work it is likely that they are the children/grandchildren of the Georgian nomenklatura (and, in fact, one admitted that his father worked for the Ministry of Interior).

A heartless attitude to the suffering population in Georgia was also displayed by Elena Tevdoradze, a leading Citizens Union deputy and Chairman of the Parliamentary Human Rights Commission. Mrs. Tevdoradze had gained a reputation in the past for her sensitive attitude to issues concerning prisoners in Georgia, including political prisoners. She had even intervened to try to help the families of high-profile Zviadist prisoners, like Petre Gelbakhiani and Irakle Dokvadze, who remain in labour camps. In 1999 she also told BHHRG that Georgia was not yet fit to join the Council of Europe.

However, her attitude to the disadvantaged in Georgian society has markedly changed. When BHHRG representatives told her they had been approached by a group of teachers in the lobby of the parliament complaining about unpaid wages and the appalling conditions in which they work - lack of heating, etc. Mrs Tevdoradze said that she knew them and they were not teachers but "provocateurs and beggars". When this was relayed to the group of women (who looked haggard and unhealthy) they all produced their documents proving that they were, in fact, teachers.

The Gongadze Effect: A Journalist's murder and the incriminating cassette

Running like a leitmotiv through the recent events in Georgia has been the blowback from the murder of Rustavi 2 journalist Giorgi Sanaia and the existence of a video cassette which, allegedly, shows the connection between senior Georgian officials and the drugs trade in the Pankisi Gorge. Sanaia had access to the cassette two days before he died.

The death of Sinaia recalls a similar incident in Ukraine last year when Internet journalist, Heorhiy Gongadze, went missing. A long dispute ensued over whether or not a headless body found outside Kiev was his. At the same time a tape recording emerged of discussions conducted by president Kuchma with security officials, including Nikolai Melnichenko, which showed the Ukrainian president in an extremely bad light.

The Gongadze affair was obviously aimed at unseating President Kuchma, something which (to date) it has still failed to do. Should the contents of the Georgian cassette (which is a video not audio cassette as was the case in Ukraine) be made public the same pressures could be expected to build up on Shevardnadze, if only because of guilt by association. Mrs Tevdoradze would not say exactly what she had seen or heard on the tape but made clear it would implicate senior people.

BHHRG interviewed Elena Tevdoradze in her office in the parliament building. She has emerged as a central figure in the affair concerning the cassette and the death of journalist Georgi Sanaia. She told BHHRG that she had come into possession of the tape before anyone else. It had been given to her by the son of a Lebanese businessman since kidnapped and in the Pankisi Gorge. He claimed it contained evidence of high officials of the Ministry of the Interior involved in the drug trade; Mrs Tevdoradze admitted to having seen the tape. According to her there are allegedly 7 copies in existence. The former Minister of the Interior, Kokha Targamadze, had one as did the former Prosecutor. When they told her that there was nothing of interest in the tapes she offered it to Georgi Sanaia to see what he as a leading investigative journalist thought. Sanaia was given two days to look at the cassette, however when Mrs. Tevdoradze rang his mobile phone to arrange to collect it there was no answer. It soon emerged that Sanaia was dead, killed at close range in his flat by an anonymous gunman.

Mrs Tevdoradze says that she has always been prepared to discuss the contents of the cassette with the prosecutors office and, for the first time, she had been called in for an interview . However, she seemed unnerved by the whole incident and a great deal less composed than she had done on previous occasions when she interviewed by BHHRG.

Everyone talked to about the cassette agreed that at some time in the near future its contents would be made public and expected that revelation to be the cause of more upheaval in Georgia, possibly on the streets.

Conclusion

BHHRG's observers in Georgia concluded that a powerful movement was now underway to remove Eduard Shevardnadze from power before his term of office ends in 2005. The official reason for this change of heart is his alleged closeness to Russian-backed politicians who are mired in corruption and involved in criminal activities, like drug dealing. As BHHRG has noted on numerous occasions, allegations of corruption always goes down well with the local population particularly in an impoverished place like Georgia. This is not to say that corruption does not take place: Georgia is a 'Mobutuized' society where cold and hunger marches hand in hand with large Mercedes , casinos and expensive restaurants. In August 2001 the head of the local Red Cross was fired for fraud. This Group long ago pointed to the scandalous theft of humanitarian aid by the authorities.

Allegations that Mr. Shevardnadze and other Georgian politicians are pursuing a pro-Russian policy should be treated with caution. The president and his team have long been under the influence of Washington. It seems that Russia has begun to flex its muscles in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in New York, but there is, as yet, no evidence that they support any particular group of politicians to succeed Shevardnadze. However , the fear that they might, no doubt led to rush to promote Mikheil Saakashvili as the new saviour of Georgia in the weeks that followed.

Therefore, it would be naïve for ordinary Georgians to think the reasons behind the latest events in their country are honourable and straightforward. The history of the Soviet Union is littered with campaigns to liquidate one set of 'corrupt' officials and replace them with, what soon turn out to be, people cut from the same cloth. (Mr. Shevardnadze came to prominence as the local scourge of corruption in the late 1960s and early 1970s when he was the protégé of Leonid Brezhnev’s infamous “stagnant” regime in the Kremlin.) Serious social change will never take place unless ordinary Georgians are allowed to take political matters back into their own hands. Right now, political parties have no existence at the grassroots - they are empty vessels run from the top for the enrichment of a small group of cadres most of whom are directed and influenced by Western policy concerns.

The 'young reformers' in Georgia tend to be Western-educated types who have suddenly, as in places like Serbia and Slovakia, come to have the vocal backing of a well-funded, compliant media outlet, Rustavi 2, to further their interests. None of those interviewed by BHHRG expressed any serious concern for the appalling conditions under which most people in Georgia live and their embrace of the discredited nostrums of post-Soviet economic reform gives little room for hope that conditions in Georgia will change should they come to power. It is difficult to believe that human rights will improve under their watch either when the chairman of the parliamentary human rights commission can refer to Georgia's poor as "provacateurs and beggars".

It is even conceivable that post-Shevardnadze things in Georgia could actually get worse. During its decade of transition, the ex-Soviet republic has slipped from the Second to the Third World. The West’s record in choosing “reformers” who actually do good for their people is cruelly poor. If the chorus of Western diplomats, “experts” and journalists demand change and strike up a hymn of praise for Shevardnadze’s successor, then pity poor Georgia because they will have discovered that the worst is yet to come.

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Georgia:

The revolution of guns, not roses

Kmara's clenched fist - straight from the Otpor training manual

Executive Summary

On 23rd November, 2003 Eduard Shevardnadze who had ruled Georgia for 11 years was overthrown in a coup d’état following allegations of fraud in the country’s parliamentary election held on 2nd November. The Georgian government collapsed simultaneously and new presidential elections have been called for 4th January 2004 with a fresh parliamentary poll to be held at a later date. In the meantime, the country is being ruled by an interim government appointed by the former Speaker of the Georgian parliament - and one of the coup organizers - Nino Burjanadze who is, according to the Georgian constitution, the interim legal acting president.

BHHRG’s representatives observed the 2003 election and concluded that it was conducted to a higher standard than all the other polls the Group has monitored in Georgia since 1992. However, BHHRG was aware that elaborate plans had been laid both in Tbilisi and abroad to dispute the conduct of the election as well as the results. The agenda was devised for opposition parties to challenge the compilation and accuracy of the country’s electoral registers claiming that voter lists were at the same time both inflated and incomplete, in the latter case due to the absence on the rolls of large numbers of their supporters. At the same time, a deliberately misleading opinion and exit poll was used to persuade the population of Georgia that the Western-favoured opposition parties led in the opinion polls and that its two electoral blocs had been cheated of victory by the manipulations of the Shevardnadze regime.

Although the coup was sentimentally referred to by the Western media as the ‘revolution of roses’, it has followed a familiar course with the dismissal of large numbers of officials and government employees and their replacement by opposition appointees. Opposition-sponsored violence also seems to be on the increase. Although BHHRG’s observers were always outspokenly critical of the Shevardnadze regime when most other human rights groups and democracy activists were silent and supportive, they fear that Georgia’s already poverty-stricken, third world status will deteriorate further as its new rulers appear to be more interested in the country’s place on the world stage than in domestic issues. Its new rulers were key promoters of the policies in the 1990s which led to the implosion of living standards in Georgia.

As people struggle to make sense of Eduard Shevardnadze’s devastating descent from messiah to pariah, Georgia is moving on and preparing to become a front line in the ‘war on terror’ as the new regime adopts a more aggressive approach to Russia. If not handled with care, belligerence towards its neighbour in the north could lead to unpleasant and unforeseen consequences that could involve an inevitable confrontation between the superpowers.

Georgia: Parliamentary Elections 2003

Background

Even in Soviet times the south Caucasian republic of Georgia enjoyed a favourable reputation in the West for its physical beauty, vibrant culture and high standard of living. Georgia, of all the post Soviet republics, should have undergone a relatively painless transition after the collapse of Communism and quickly embraced a prosperous future as an independent state. Instead, its declaration of independence in 1990 provoked civil war as two of its provinces – Abkhazia and South Ossetia - proclaimed de facto independence. They still remain outside the control of the authorities in Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, although unrecognised internationally. Meanwhile, thousands of refugees from the wars languish in miserable accommodation all over the country.

In 1991, Georgia’s first democratically elected president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, was overthrown in a violent coup d’état. Many players had a hand in bringing his shaky presidency to an end including local militias, units from Russian bases stationed in the republic and Western governments who regarded Gamsakhurdia as a ‘flaky’ nationalist with no experience of government. These disparate groups were delighted when former Georgian Communist Party boss and the Soviet Union’s last foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, returned to the country in 1992 and assumed power. He was elected Speaker of Parliament – in effect, head of state - in elections held in October, 1992. After a new constitution was passed in 1995, Shevardnadze successfully won elections as president in 1995 and, again in 2000.

BHHRG’s observers monitored these elections.[1] However, although the Group found them to be fundamentally flawed, international organizations and Western states validated the results and uncritically supported Shevardnadze’s presidency until the end of the decade. His power base was also bolstered with large amounts of Western aid, making Georgia, by the mid 1990s, the third largest recipient of US financial assistance per capita in the world. The president reciprocated this largesse by faithfully supporting Washington’s policy agenda in the region which included sending peacekeepers to Kosovo and partaking in NATO’s ‘train and equip’ programme. In 1999, Georgia became an associate member of NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly with the goal of joining the organization in the near future. US troops were allowed to base themselves in Georgia as part of the war on terrorism to pursue alleged Al Qaeda guerrilla activity in the Pankisi Gorge on the border with Chechnya.

Shevardnadze’s Georgia was also a co-signatory to an agreement for a pipeline to be built that would take oil from the Caspian Sea via Georgia to Turkey and on to Western markets. Funding and construction of the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline are now underway. A further agreement was recently signed for the Shah-Deniz pipeline, this time to take gas from the Caspian - again to Turkey and the West. Georgia’s own domestic energy woes were meant to be solved by the sale of the country’s main electricity provider to a US company, AES, in 1999.

However, despite his cosy (client) relationship with the West, the financial crumbs never left the table and reached the population of Georgia. During the 1990s the usual course of ‘reform’ unfolded leading to the closure of most of the country’s enterprises while its agricultural sector (including its world-famous vineyards) faced a crisis with the collapse of the Soviet market. Large numbers of people – the young, in particular – left, usually to Russia. According to census figures released in May 2003, the population of Georgia has shrunk by 1m. since independence.[2] Serious, mafia-related crime often perpetrated by the militias who had overrun the country during the early 1990s, also created misery for large sections of the population. Many supporters of former president Gamsakhurdia were arrested, often tortured and kept in inhumane conditions in the country’s appalling jails. A few Western human rights groups expressed concern, but their (albeit muted) protests were never followed up by Mr. Shevardnadze’s friends in Washington or Brussels.

By the end of the decade Georgia was a mess. Its population survived on a few lari (the Georgian currency) a month – pensioners receive 14 lari. But, large numbers of people in rural areas had opted out of the monetarized economy to live at subsistence level, depending on a few cows, hens and a vegetable garden for survival. The world of oil pipelines seemed far away from the true state of Georgia with its crumbling infrastructure, including bad roads and electricity shortages. Unfavourable stories began to appear in the Western media but, until the late 1990s, Shevardnadze still appeared immune from criticism.

Eduard Shevardnadze’s Fall from Grace

Few ordinary Georgians will have mourned the fall of Eduard Shevardnadze on 23rd November, 2003. Most of them were dismayed when he returned to their country in 1992, despite the propaganda dished out to Western audiences at the time which constantly harped on his ‘popularity’. Shevardnadze had been a ruthless first secretary of the Communist Party between 1972-85 presiding over a harsh Moscow-backed campaign against alleged corruption. He had also overseen the destruction of large parts of old Tbilisi which led to many residents being thrown out of their homes at a moment’s notice and relocated to large blocks of flats whose architecture was wholly inappropriate to the local style. Ironically, his return to power in 1992 was followed by more destruction of Tbilisi as mafia businessmen pulled down historic buildings in the old city replacing them with tasteless houses, bars and hotels.[3]

Almost immediately, on his return leading Western politicians came to pay court to the man who they lauded for helping to bring an end to the Cold War. Then U.S. Secretary of State, James Baker proffered the hand of unending friendship; Germany’s Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher was another big fan. Shevardnadze was also a regular visitor to the U.S. where he schmoozed with the likes of George Schultz, ending up as a director of Schultz run companies. In 1995 he visited London and took tea with the Queen at Buckingham Palace. He was loaded with honorary doctorates from Harvard, Boston and Emory universities in the U.S. as well as numerous, well-funded prizes. In 1993 the Germans gave him the Immanuel Kant prize, in 1997 he was awarded the Onnasis Prize, and, also in 1997, he received the Nixon Prize. In 1999 Madelaine Albright presented him with the National Democratic Institute’s (NDI) Harriman Medal of Freedom.

But these were false friends. Zeyno Baran of the Nixon Centre, who was an election observer at the 2nd November election, is now one of his most fervent critics[4] and the NDI has actively helped bring about his downfall. Perhaps the furies really were after Eduard Shevardnadze when he was given the Enron Prize in 1999 by none other than Ken Lay in a ceremony held in the Baker Centre at Rice University but none of his critics today said so at the time.[5]

But on closer inspection, Shevardnadze’s friendship with the likes of George Schultz and James Baker never quite rung true. Despite the sycophantic efforts of journalists like Simon Sebag Montefiore who has continued to boast about his special relationship with the old party hack[6] the president spoke no English - the only language spoken by his American friends. In Washington, those close to the centres of power hinted that their closeness to Eduard Shevardnadze wasn’t a matter of social niceties and that the old Politburo member had been ‘turned’ and was now an ‘asset’ of the United States.

The few isolated voices (like BHHRG) who claimed all along that the Shevardnadze regime was corrupt, incompetent and cruel were derided. A British Foreign Office official is reported as saying: “They [meaning BHHRG] also monitored the elections in Georgia in 1995, and it would appear that [they] had made up their minds about the election report even before the election had taken place”.[7] As the BHHRG representative in question had prepared a pre-election report together with the Norwegian Helsinki Committee it is hardly surprising that they were opining before the poll took place. Judging from the briefing material handed out to British Foreign Office employees before the 2nd November 2003 poll, it would seem that their minds had also been made up “even before the election had taken place”!

On 23rd September 2003 the United States announced that it was cutting USAID funding to Georgia. The World Bank and IMF also pulled the plug stopping loans until, that is, the ‘corruption’ in Georgia was cleared up.[8] These handouts have never helped ordinary Georgian citizens but they are the engine of much of the corruption in countries like Georgia. The grants and loans are important as they enable a government to pay off its apparatus and attendant cronies. The withdrawal of such funds meant that Shevardnadze’s power base was strapped for cash in the run up to the election. This was attested to by the fact that by 23rd November, he had been deserted by his security organs as well as the army and the police.

Georgia on the eve of the 2003 election

Basic Facts

The 2nd November poll was the fourth parliamentary election held in Georgia since the fall of the Soviet Union.

There are 235 seats in the Georgian parliament. 150 are filled by party lists while 85 MPs are elected from single mandate constituencies. A referendum was held at the same time as the 2003 parliamentary election which asked voters whether they agreed with reducing the number of MPs to fewer than 150. Although passed, the proposition will not, presumably, be implemented as the 2nd November 2003 poll has been declared void. 22 blocs and parties contested the election, an improvement on previous years – in 1999 33 blocs and 3000 individual candidates took part in the poll. In 1999 the election law was amended to introduce a threshold of 7% for a party’s eligibility to enter parliament. Only 3 parties/blocs managed to do so that year – the Citizens Union (41.75%), Revival Union (25.18%) and Industry Will Save Georgia which scraped through with 7.08%. Turnout in 1999 was officially 67%. The Unified Election Code was further amended in 2003 to allow for a new CEC and abolish the use of additional voters’ lists.

However, the large number of political organizations registered in Georgia creates a misleading impression. Many of them are little more than names and there is next-to-no grass roots political life in the country. Like most post-Soviet societies, politics is a luxury for the few, inhibited for the many by the daily grind. Travel between regions is impaired by bad roads and a virtually non-existent rail network. There are few cities of any size – it takes 4 hours to drive from Tbilisi to Georgia’s second largest town, Kutaisi, and there are no regular flights to the country’s largest port, Batumi. The constitution allows the president to appoint regional governors meaning that local administrations are under central control. With massive unemployment, many people are unwilling to rock the boat by supporting parties frowned on by the apparat in Tbilisi. As this apparat has now changed, many voters will cast their ballots accordingly in support of the ‘new class’, the Burjanadze Democrats and the National Movement.

Political Parties, fronts and turncoats

In 1993, Shevardnadze consolidated his rule by overseeing the creation of a political party, the Citizens Union, which won the country’s (flawed) elections in 1995 and 1999. Although there has been much romanticism about the ‘opposition’ which has now overthrown him, its leading members were all personally close to Mr. Shevardnadze as well as being Citizens Union MPs and ministers in successive Georgian governments. For example, Zurab Zhvania was Chairman of the Georgian parliament until he resigned in 2002. He topped the Citizen’s Union party list for the 1999 parliamentary election. Mikheil Saakashvili was second on that list and, at the same time, chairman of the party. He later became Minister of Justice resigning from his post in 2001 after claiming that the government would not support him in the fight against corruption. This was the beginning of Mr. Saakashvili’s fight for the ‘little man’. In the following year, Saakashvili founded his own political party, the National Movement, to contest the 2002 local elections. A coalition of parties, including the National Movement, gained control of Tbilisi city council and Saakashvili became, effectively, the council’s leader.

Nino Burjanadze was No. 6 on the Citizens Union list in 1999. Previously Chairman of the Parliamentary Legal Affairs Committee, she became Speaker of Parliament after Zhvania resigned in 2002. Burjanadze and Zhvania joined forces to form the bloc, the ‘United Democratic Party’ known as the ‘Burjanadze Democrats’ for the 2003 election. It was openly accepted that she should front the party as Mr. Zhvania is deeply unpopular in Georgia. However, despite the spin which extols Mrs. Burjanadze’s gravitas and ‘scholarly appearance’ due, no doubt, to the fact that she wears glasses, local critics refer to her as a ‘marionette’ in the hands of the more powerful Zhvania.

Family ties were also at work cementing the three former Shevardnadze loyalists (referred to by critics as ‘Shevardnadze’s children’) to successive governments in Georgia. Mrs. Burjanadze’s father had been a close colleague of Shevardnadze’s in Soviet times when he ran the country’s bread monopoly since privatised to Burjanadze senior’s benefit. He had also been best man at Shevardnadze’s wedding. Mrs. Burjanadze’s husband was also Georgia’s deputy prosecutor-general and, before that, the country’s chief military prosecutor. As for Saakashvili, his affection for Mr. Shevardnadze was such that he named his son Eduard after the president.

Although the Western media consistently describes these people as ‘the opposition’ they are only a small part of the political landscape in Georgia. There have always been anti-Shevardnadze parties but, they are either ignored by Western commentators or dismissed as either ‘nationalistic’ or ‘Soviet nostalgic’. Needless to say, as all power, including the media, rested in the hands of Shevardnadze and his Citizens Union, the real opposition never stood a chance of coming to power. For example, until the mid 1990s, supporters of former president Gamsakhurdia remained implacably opposed to the Shevardnadze regime although the movement lost momentum after the former president died in mysterious circumstances in December 1993. Zviadists still maintain some support in Western Georgia, in the former president’s home region of Mingrelia. Meanwhile, the police and security services hounded the remaining Zviadists who were subjected to arrest and trial on what appeared to be trumped up charges. BHHRG met many of them either in prison or living in poverty-stricken circumstances in Tbilisi and concluded that they lacked the means or capacity to threaten the security of the state.

The Zviadist political movement split as some members urged realism: the president was dead and the only chance of continuing his legacy was to join other parties. However, its remaining intellectual core has remained intact and continues to be implacably anti-Russian, blaming all Georgia’s woes on Moscow, despite the fact that economic and social collapse has only come about under Western tutelage. The fact that the Zviadist movement was still something to play for is demonstrated by Michel Saakashvili’s cynical appeal to the former president’s supporters during the 2003 parliamentary campaign - the movement’s Zviad Dzidiguri was among the top 5 candidates on Saakashvili’s party list. The representatives of the youth organization, Kmara, also said that Saakashvili had Zviadists “with him”. BHHRG was told by Kmara, that Gamsakhurdia had been a “real patriot” whom “everyone loved” adding that no one, either, had a bad word to say for Merab Kostava (Gamsakhurdia’s fellow dissident who was killed in a car crash in 1988). “People blame Russia for overthrowing Gamsakhurdia” they added. Several Tbilisi-based, Zviadist intellectuals had swallowed this cynical change of heart - the Kmara youth tend to be children of official Tbilisi which always hated the late president.[9]

The Zviadist realists eventually joined up with the Revival Union, a party that was the brainchild of Aslan Abashidze, the governor of the regional province of Adjara. They cooperated in the 1999 election and Revival became the second largest party in the Georgian parliament. BHHRG’s observers at the 1999 election reported that numerous acts of violence and intimidation had been directed against Revival supporters both before and during the poll, presumably by the authorities; BHHRG’s observers were convinced that Revival was the real winner of that election.[10] Even Radio Free Europe had to admit that Revival was the most serious challenger to Shevardnadze’s regime in 1999.[11] Other Zviadists remained in their own small organization and fought the 20003 election as the National Unity bloc.

Western governments and their tame media consistently ignore opposition parties they don’t like or approve of. For example, 3 Western-orientated parties are always referred to as ‘the opposition’ in Ukraine, thus ignoring the much larger Communist Party. In Serbia, the situation is so Orwellian that the DOS government which consisted of 17 minute parties continued to be referred to as the ‘opposition’ well into its 3rd year in power. The main opposition parties, the Serbian Radicals and Socialist parties are, again, ignored or referred to with a peg attached to the nose. In Georgia, there are several leftist parties which all have a reasonable degree of support. For example, there is the Labour Party which did well in Tbilisi in the 2002 local elections. Labour has campaigned against the high cost of electricity prices. Another party, Industry Will Save Georgia, also put forward a leftist platform that demanded the exclusion of the IMF from Georgia. It was the third largest party in parliament after the 1999 poll. Yet another party, Unity, led by the last boss of the Georgian CP, Jumbar Patiashvili also has a respectable following. No attention was paid to the ‘pure’ Zviadists re-grouped around Guram Absandze in the National Unity bloc although Mrs. Burjanadze has reportedly rewarded the Zviadists for their support by appointing Absandze a deputy minister of state in the new government.[12]

There is also the situation, familiar in many post-Soviet states of politicians moving from one party to another - from left to right to centre and back again. Saakashvili is a case in point. As Shevardnadze’s Minister of Justice he was a ‘centrist’. Now he has reinvented himself as a patriotic Georgian nationalist. Other parties have swapped their allegiances. For example, the former Speaker of Parliament in Gamsakhurdia’s government, Akaki Asatiani, moved the support of his Traditionalist Party away from its 1999 alliance with Revival to the Burjanadze Democrats in 2003. Irina Sarishvili-Chanturia who had always stood as an opponent of Mr. Shevardnadze allied her National Democratic Party with the pro-Shevardnadze, For a New Georgia (FANG) bloc this time round.

Another turncoat is David Gamkrelidze who left the Citizens Union in 2001 to form the New Rights Party which has strong ties with the U.S. Republican Party. The party’s spokesman, Irakli Areshidze, told BHHRG that he was “a neo-con” and that New Rights supported ultra-free market policies, including an increase in Georgia’s defence spending to 3% of the budget which would mean even more vicious cuts in social spending. The idea that Georgians living in a malfunctioning rural society which cannot provide the most basic needs like electricity and water should want to increase defence spending defies belief and demonstrates the real agenda behind this party’s policies.

Generally speaking, as time goes on and the quality of life fails to improve, fewer people are going out to vote. The turnout for the 2003 election was 50%, down 17% from 1999. Due to the profusion of parties, their mixed messages and strange alliances – blocs often contain groupings of both right and left - people tend to cast their vote for personalities. Even then, their allegiances are fickle: BHHRG remembers voters ecstatically chanting Shevardnadze’s name outside polling stations in 1992, yet during the recent election they were screaming abuse at him. In both cases, there was a strong suspicion that the centres of power had encouraged the public response, meaning that power had shifted away from Shevardnadze by November, 2003.

Election-driven coups

The international community began to distance itself from Mr. Shevardnadze and his regime in 2000 when the OSCE harshly criticized the conduct of that year’s presidential election. It was the first time that the organization had made an unqualified attack on a Georgian poll. By 2003, many commentators would have agreed with Avtandil Ioseliani, Chairman of the Georgian State Intelligence Department, that “with the approach of the general elections in Georgia …the intervention of Western countries in Georgian domestic affairs is very likely”.[13]

In 2001, several leading figures in the Citizens Union broke away from the party and by the time of the election only 47 members of parliament remained in its parliamentary caucus. The Speaker, Zurab Zhvania resigned followed by the Minister of Justice, Mikheil Saakashvili. Later, Nino Burjanadze, Zhvania’s successor as parliamentary speaker also abandoned the presidential team. Other well-known politicians left the Citizens Union, including Eelena Tevdoradze who was the parliamentary human rights chairman under Shevardandze. BHHRG visited Georgia in 2001 and talked to the opposition as well as its tame media and NGO support system.[14] It was obvious then that plans were being laid to ditch Shevardnadze’s regime. However, the shock caused to the USA by the 11th September events and that country’s preoccupation with the upcoming war in Iraq probably delayed the president’s eventual ouster.

During the Group’s 2001 visit there was much talk of Mikheil Saakashvili as the ‘coming man’. He had obviously been targeted some time ago to play a leading role in Georgian politics having been groomed during an extensive period of study at American universities, including Columbia Law school. His various U.S. diplomas are always prominently displayed on the wall behind him during television interviews. He also spent time as an intern with the top New York law firm, Patterson, Belknap, Webb and Tyler. Later, he founded his own political party, the National Movement, to fight local elections for the Tbilisi city council in 2002. The NM adopted the trappings of ancient Georgian independence, including its red and white flag.

President Shevardnadze’s supporters formed a new bloc, For a New Georgia (FANG) to contest the 2003 election. Probably reflecting the absence of foreign funding, FANG’s campaign was a pale shadow of those conducted in the past by the Citizens Union. By 2003, the party’s offices were situated in a dark, run down building away from the city centre. Its election campaign and posters were positively restrained compared with those for the Burjanadze Democrats and Saakashvili’s National Movement, whose lavishly coloured banners decorated numerous buildings and bestrode the country’s major highways. Poverty-stricken Georgian peasants driving their few pigs and goats along these roads must have marvelled at the ‘democrats’ no-expense-spared election campaign and calculated that the cost of one of these banners could have paid their pensions for several years.

BHHRG interviewed George Zurabashvili, Secretary General of the Citizens Union, about the campaign. He was dubious about the level of support claimed by opposition parties saying that the media inflates their numbers. He alleged that Zhvania’s popularity was nil and that Mrs. Burjanadze had a reputation as a “dirty politician”. He also expressed suspicion about the motivation for criticizing the electoral lists claiming that the “chaos had been prepared deliberately to provide an excuse to falsify the election”. He also wanted to know what had happened to the list prepared by the U.S. based International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES). Although BHHRG was told by other parties, including the Labour Party, that the government controlled all the levers of power Zurabishvili hinted that there were people in all parts of the administration, including the departments of state, like the Justice Ministry, who supported the opposition and could be part of its plans to sabotage the poll. Mikheil Saakashvili was Minister of Justice until he resigned in 2001. In the days before the 23rd November ‘coup’, Tedo Japaridze, Secretary of the National Security Council and former Georgian ambassador to the U.S., appeared to jump ship. On 30th November he was rewarded for his disloyalty to Mr. Shevardnadze by being made the country’s Foreign Minister in the new government.[15]

How to manufacture a flawed election

There were several strands in the strategy which led to the coup d’etat, officially caused by the peoples’ indignation that the election had been stolen. First of all, a level of confusion was created so that the electorate was driven to lose faith in the veracity of the electoral process. This was primarily done by constantly denouncing the state of the election registers.

Election Lists:
When examining the farrago that surrounded the allegations that the election lists in Georgia were a mess[16], two important factors have to be borne in mind. Firstly, everyone who lives in the country and has the right to vote has a passport or identity card. Georgia’s constitution does not permit dual citizenship, so there can be no ‘foreigners’ who can vote in the republic. In other words, compilation of the electoral register should be simple. Secondly, voters’ lists have been consistently bad in the past because the authorities permitted the use of an additional list for those whose names were not recorded on the official register. No doubt, a combination of schlamperei and manipulation by the powers-that-be (which, until recently included the Saakashvili-Zhvania-Burjanadze trio) allowed this unsatisfactory practice to continue. Everyone admits now that the additional list enabled people to vote in several polling stations by adding their names to these lists and that their use was widespread. In previous polls monitored by BHHRG its observers noted unusually high numbers of voters on these lists.

BHHRG was told by, the Labour Party that extra names had been added to boost FANG’s share of the vote while their own supporters had been removed. Members of the Zviadist National Unity bloc made the preposterous claim that 140,000 members of their party were left off the lists. On the one hand, they were inflated, on the other, large numbers of people were alleged to be missing. Complaints continued until the last moment that people had been added/left off the lists – again, mainly in Tbilisi and Kutaisi. Mrs Burjanadze herself said that she had been left off the electoral register in Kutaisi. According to the National Movement, the only living people on the list for Tbilisi’s Krtsanisi district were the Shevardnadze family and three other residents[17] On 30th October, the New Rights Party added their voice to the debate claiming that there were only 1.58 m. eligible voters in Georgia while the CEC put the number at 2.7 m. Articles appeared in the press claiming that thousands of dead people were registered while the living were missing.

The deadline for completion of the registers was pushed forward to 30th October, 3 days before polling began. In the event, the final lists were hand written as there had been no time to print them out from the computerised material. The authorities in Adjara tired of this game, so, they conducted their own census and produced their own computerised lists, with photographs appended. Nevertheless, the NDI claimed, falsely, that the lists in Adjara were not computerised.[18] Despite their best endeavours and with no evidence other than bald assertions, the OSCE and other election monitors repeated the allegation that the Adjaran lists were inflated. As the Georgian script is impenetrable to most Westerners it is still a mystery how these observers can have had a clue about how many people there are and who lived where in Georgia.

There were many recommendations from experts before the 2003 poll, including from the Venice Commission, the Council of Europe’s legal arm which demanded, among other things, more women candidates. During the early months of 2003 the US-based organization, International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES), sent a team to Georgia to computerise the voter registers. At the same time, the Georgian Ministry of Interior was compiling its own lists. There were constant complaints about the slowness of the process as well as allegations that names had been both added or omitted. The situation was further complicated when a new Central Election Commission began work at the beginning of September. IFES presented its computerised list in October giving the new CEC little time to check its contents before the 2nd November poll. Then, on 27th October, IFES mysteriously shut up shop saying it was closing its operations because its workers were “too tired”. The team left Tbilisi, its work uncompleted.[19] Following this, both the opposition and CEC decided it was “too difficult” so late in the day to check the computerised data and opted to use hand-written lists.

However, it was the Georgian authorities rather than the international ‘experts’ who ensured that additional lists were abolished for the 2003 election. A change was made to the election code to that effect. BHHRG’s observers have repeatedly reported the unsatisfactory state of the election lists in Georgia and it seems that most people, at least on the ground, agreed. However, the possibility of participating in the poll anyway by having ones name added to the additional list meant that no one bothered too much about the system. It is now admitted that these lists enabled people to go around and vote in several polling stations without being detected. As it happens, the Shevardnadze government feared that this kind of malpractice would now be used against them and, therefore, stopped the practice.

People were also urged to check the lists, but “ a poll of 600 [voters] in Tbilisi found 25% wouldn’t protest as they think the outcome of the election predetermined”[20] The implication being that they wouldn’t vote anyway – so what did it matter if the lists were inaccurate? On the 1st November, CEC head, Nina Devdoriani announced that people not on the lists could vote after all if they showed reliable identification at their polling stations.[21] This should, finally, have buried the issue of the lists. But, of course, her intervention wasn’t widely reported and complaints from NGOs and Western observers continued.

Some Georgians could be forgiven for thinking that this mess was deliberately engineered to create maximum dissatisfaction with the authorities. The implication was clear: the government was involved in falsifying the registers to its own benefit. However, this does not necessarily follow. The two places with the worst lists – Tbilisi and Kutaisi – are opposition-run towns and opposition appointed personnel (presumably) provided the information for the central authorities to work with. In 2002, BHHRG’s observer at the Georgian local elections suspected large scale fraud on the part of Mr. Saakashvili’s party in Tbilisi. It is conceivable that from within the system local supporters of both Mr. Saakashvili and Mrs. Burjanadze deliberately sabotaged the lists.

During BHHRG’s observations on polling day they heard only one complaint from a voter about the state of the registers. This was in Western Georgia, in the region of Poti and Senaki – a part of Georgia not controlled by the opposition. The only guide for non-Georgian speakers when it came to verifying the lists was the presence or absence of birth dates and the numbers on houses/blocks of flats. In the past, BHHRG observers had noted that birth dates were often missing, but in November 2003 this was not the case. Commentators jeered at the fact that the date ‘1860’ appeared against some names. However, this denoted the fact that the voter’s date of birth was unknown – ‘1860’ is the first date a computer comes up with and is used to denote ‘not known’.

Composition of election commissions: The Saakashvili trio also complained about what they claimed was the unbalanced composition of the CEC, saying it was biased against them. In July 2003, former US Secretary of State and Shevardnadze crony, James Baker, was dispatched to Tbilisi to try to broker an agreement between the government and its critics over both the composition of the CEC and the compilation of the lists.[22] The OSCE’s office in Tbilisi handed Baker a list of 3 acceptable candidates for chairmanship of the CEC. Zurab Chiaberashvili, head of the ‘Fair Elections’ NGO, told BHHRG that the OSCE would not have submitted a candidate who was pro-government. The 3 were: a former ombudsman, Nana Devdariani, David Usupashvili and Vakhtang Khmaladze, a candidate for the New Rights party. BHHRG interviewed David Usupashvili in 2001 at the offices of the Young Lawyers Association, an NGO funded by the U.S. IRIS educational programme. Mr. Usupashvili, a fluent English speaker, made no secret of the fact that he supported Saakashvili and was obviously close to Western interests in the country. A compromise was reached and Nana Devdoriani was chosen. Presumably, the government looked upon her as the least worst option in terms of being influenced by ‘outside interests’.

Baker then tried to persuade the Georgian authorities to change the composition of the CEC. He wanted a formula whereby 5 seats would go to the government and 9 to the opposition, by which he meant the West’s favoured parties. However, membership of the CEC has normally reflected the parties’ representation in parliament which meant that the Revival Union and the Industrialists had a greater claim to seats than the Burjanadze Democrats and National Movement which were only formed, respectively, in 2002 and 2003. When Baker departed, Revival and the Industrialists successfully made their case for having 5 seats on the commission, based on their seats in parliament – 3 for Revival and 2 for the Industrialists. The Western-favoured ‘opposition’ gained 4 – one each for the National Movement, Burjanadze Democrats, Labour Party and New Rights distributed between them on the basis of having been the top 4 parties in the Tbilisi city council elections in 2002. In other words, Baker’s formula was turned down and the US was furious.

The media and opinion polls: Rustavi TV has been broadcasting in Georgia since 1996. It is a slick, professional operation compared to the dowdy, dull Georgian state TV. Rustavi has been a major mouthpiece for the Saakashvili opposition for the past 3 years. BHHRG visited the stations headquarters in Tbilisi in 2001 and learned how it had received Western funding in the past, although its chief editor claimed then that this was no longer the case. Rustavi 2 was a key ingredient in the election campaign – as Radio B92 had been in Serbia. Like B92, Rustavi gave air time to the local youth group – Otpor in the former, Kmara in Georgia - who urged people to go out to vote, threatening ‘reprisals’ to the government if they were found cheating. It also broadcast the results of an opinion poll consistently showing that the approved opposition parties were in the lead with For a New Georgia only garnering support in single figures. This set the scene for outpourings of rage when the opposition failed to win its predicted victory. Mikheil Saakashvili “threatened to convene national protests. If Shevardnadze refuses to acknowledge the “true” election results he will meet the same fate as …Slobodan Milosevic”[23]

Opinion polling itself was in the hands of a USAID-funded organization, the Institute for Polling and Marketing. Although there were at least 4 other polling agencies whose findings were broadcast on other Georgian TV stations, including state TV and the independent Imedi TV, its findings were exclusively used by Rustavi 2 and by Western media. Unsurprisingly, this poll always put the favoured opposition parties in the lead. Opposition-supporting NGOs also created a system for the parallel counting of the vote and turnout at targeted polling stations (the Burjanadze Democrats told BHHRG that this should amount to c. 20% of the total) which was broadcast throughout the day on Rustavi TV. The intention was plain: to lead viewers into believing that these were the official figures. When the CEC approved results began to come through, the opposition duly cried foul.
International observers: It was also necessary to make sure that key, experienced personnel were part of the international observer teams. Patrick Merloe an ‘election expert’ with the NDI was one member of a team visiting Georgia from 4th to 7th October.[24] BHHRG encountered Merloe in Armenia in 1998 when he had been part of the campaign to discredit the conduct of that year’s presidential election which brought Robert Kocharian to power. In 2000, he appeared in Lima as a member of the NDI team observing Peru’s presidential election which foreshadowed the downfall of Alberto Fujimori. BHHRG also saw several old hands from the Balkans present in Tbilisi during the election period, including those who had been present in Albania in 1997.
The President of the International Republican Institute (IRI), George Folsom, arrived in time for the poll. Folsom was active with the opposition in Venezuela in the run up to April 2002’s brief coup to unseat President Hugo Chavez during which he boasted that "IRI has promoted the strengthening of democracy in Venezuela since 1994 and recognizes that Venezuela's future is not a return to its pre-Chavez past”[25]
Bruce George, a British Labour Party MP and ‘special coordinator’ of the OSCE observer mission to Georgia, talked up Mrs. Burjanadze as “my vice-chairman” referring to her role as part of the Georgian delegation to the OSCE parliamentary assembly. However, this whiff, nay, stench of bias has never been commented on in the media.
On 4th November, BHHRG spoke at length with an OSCE election observer in Tbilisi who had seen nothing untoward on polling day. It is not unusual for the “foot soldiers” in the international observer missions to have their opinions ignored while the key people report violations like ballot stuffing, stolen election materials, violence etc. Most former Soviet states have invited so-called ‘experts’ from international organizations to become intimately involved in their domestic election planning. It is difficult, anyway, for them to refuse to cooperate with bodies like the OSCE of which they are members. However, due to Mr. Shevardnadze’s long and close relationship with the United States there is even more involvement from abroad in the day to day business of government in Georgia. BHHRG noticed, wryly, that groups like the American NDI and IRI which never complained about human rights abuses in Georgia - like the appalling state of the country’s prisons - have become particularly vocal on the election front.

The Serbian model

All these developments reveal parallels between the events that took place in Tbilisi in November 2003 and the coup d’état that followed the presidential election in Serbia in 2000. Of course, to many observers, this was something to celebrate as it showed the triumph of ‘people power’ in the face of institutional corruption - in both cases the alleged ‘stealing’ of an election. The media was quick to label the overthrow of the Shevardnadze regime as a ‘velvet revolution’ – CNN followed up with the soubriquet, ‘rose revolution’ to give the event its own particular identity, although few roses grow in Georgia at the best of times, let alone in November. Presumably the bloom held aloft by Zurab Zhvania was imported, like most things to do with this celebration of popular democracy in Georgia.

BHHRG noted several key developments that pointed to a ‘Belgrade’ solution:

Richard Miles:
The appointment of Richard Miles as ambassador to Georgia in 2002. Miles’s career has been accompanied by a trajectory of violence and upheaval. He was ambassador in Baku, Azerbaijan in 1992-3 during Abulfaz Elchibey’s short-lived presidency that ended in a coup d’état in June 1993. Then, he moved to the Balkans. From 1996-9 he remained the U.S.’s chargé d’affaires in Belgrade after official diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia had been severed. In 1998 he took part in ‘negotiations’ during the Kosovo crisis, ostensibly to forestall violence, but, in reality, to foment it as the KLA was only emboldened by the U.S.’s position. Violence increased and NATO attacked Yugoslavia in 1999. By now, Miles had moved on and was ambassador to Bulgaria, a stone’s throw from Belgrade. While serving in the embassy in Sofia he helped another government come to power, this time led by the former king of Bulgaria, Simeon Saxe-Coburg, while, at the same time, preparing the groundwork for Bulgaria’s forthcoming membership of NATO.

Mr. Miles has made no secret of his support for the opposition in Georgia since his appointment as US Ambassador in January 2002. On 30th October, BHHRG was present when Miles in the company of Zurab Zhvania and surrounded by a posse of bodyguards visited the offices of the United Democratic Party for ‘consultations’. Later that morning, Bruce Jackson, former Vice-President of arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin and President of the U.S. Committee on NATO, held meetings with party members in the same building.

Civil Society
As BHHRG has pointed out, it is impossible for a country like Georgia where people live hungry and cold in a collapsed infrastructure, for there to be a vibrant ‘civil society’. Yet, Georgia’s already oversubscribed NGO sector dedicated to the study of international relations, human rights and promoting Western values seems to have proliferated even further during the past 2 years. On closer inspection, these NGOs aren’t non-governmental at all, being sponsored by various Western foundations, governments and embassies. Their activities involve holding seminars, providing experts and writing about Georgia, usually for dedicated web pages. The aim is to ensure that Western audiences receive the ‘party line’. Such organizations also act as cover for bringing foreign currency into the country so that the right people can be paid off. If civil commotion is factored into the equation (as it was in Serbia in 2000) even more money will be required to buy off the local structures, including the police and security organs. BHHRG noticed that there had been an increase of $77.76m. over the same period the previous year in the sums of money entering Georgia via Western Union transfers between January to September 2003[26] Added to which, despite the fact that the government was about to collapse, the value of the lari remained stable, presumably because the country was awash in dollars.

Several Georgian NGOs participated directly in the 2003 election process, most notably a well-funded organization called “Fair Elections” and an NGO, Kmara (Enough). Kmara a loose grouping of young people without an identifiable leadership was formed, ostensibly, to encourage people to vote, meaning, vote out the present government.

Kmara
These groups mirrored organizations operating in Belgrade during the 2000 presidential election, in particular, CeSID (the Centre for Free Elections and Democracy) and Otpor (Resistance). Kmara had adopted Otpor’s symbol, the clenched fist, and BHHRG was told they had “studied” Otpor which included visits to Belgrade. The Group also learned that a certain “Slobodan” from Belgrade was part of the OSCE observer delegation. Like Otpor, their allotted role was classic Communist-style agitation – they predicted that they could mobilise 5000 people quickly if they needed to and even claimed that they were popular with ‘children’.

BHHRG visited the Kmara offices in central Tbilisi and talked to the young activists who were milling around doing very little ‘agitation’ three days before the election. They said that Soros’s Open Society Foundation (as well as other NGOs) funded them but foreign embassies in Georgia only offered “moral support”. BHHRG was told that the group’s lavish advertising campaign on Rustavi 2 TV would be very expensive - a one minute’s advertising slot costs $1200. Was this paid for from Soros funds too?

They claimed to have “a few” election observers – one boy in the group talking to BHHRG wore one of the jackets donated by the British embassy in Tbilisi to the ‘Fair Elections’ organization - but their task was to “make propaganda” and put on activities such as street theatre. Unlike their more sinister equivalents in Belgrade, the young people at Kmara were positively wholesome. Many of their complaints – about corruption in Georgia’s university system and the difficulty of getting jobs on graduation are well-founded. BHHRG saw no signs of Kmara activity in the streets of Tbilisi – neither street theatre nor public meetings. On Tuesday 4th November an open-topped truck containing about 30 young Kmara representatives waving the clenched fist flag progressed along Rustaveli Avenue, but no one seemed to take any notice.

BHHRG concluded that the Kmara people they met were there to chat to visiting foreigners and were not the organization’s main activists. Other hidden faces seem to have played – and still play - a more menacing role. Rustavi 2 reported that “Kmara warned that election commission members would be arrested and jailed if they falsified results”.[27]

The Fair Elections Society
The Fair Elections group was set up to monitor all aspects of the electoral process and operated from smart offices in central Tbilisi. While BHHRG was visiting, a large consignment of green fleece jackets was being unpacked, apparently donated by the British government-backed agency, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy. The jackets would be worn by the group’s observers on election day. The floors of the well-equipped suite of offices were covered with piles of election registers which large numbers of young people were endeavouring to ‘correct’. Fair Elections’ head, Zurab Chiaberashvili, said that they would have observers in 80-85% of polling stations on election day and BHHRG’s observers can confirm that their presence was widespread. He admitted that the lists outside Tbilisi were “better” except, it seemed , for Kutaisi. They had just ‘corrected’ the official Kutaisi voter lists which, according to their research, was missing c. 600 voters. He couldn’t say whether the corrections they had recommended were made however, it did seem rather convenient that several hundred more opposition voters (Kutaisi is Mrs. Burjanadze’s stronghold) could be added to the town’s lists.

Conduct of the Poll

In its preliminary statement BHHRG outlined its conclusions of the conduct of the poll based on the findings of its observers on 2nd November, 2003.[28] Basically, the organization of the election was an improvement on previous Georgian polls monitored by the Group. For the first time, the authorities sensed that they were under serious scrutiny from the international observers and responded by cleaning up their act - which only goes to show that improvements could have been brought about in the past had organizations like the OSCE wished them to happen. By November 2003, it was too late for the authorities to gain any kudos as the West had made up its mind that the parliamentary election was going to be the occasion to mount a coup to remove the Shevardnadze regime.

BHHRG found no problems with the notorious electoral lists when they visited polling stations in the Western Georgian towns of Poti and Senaki. The Group’s observers even went to the district election commission headquarters in Poti to inquire if voters had complained in person about not being on the lists. Even if these officials were lying (when they said there had been no problems) BHHRG was struck by the absence of visitors to the office. They also saw no surge of voters around the lists posted in the polling stations, trying to find their names.

The Group encountered ‘Fair Elections’ observers everywhere they went. In Senaki, they also ran into a representative from a group funded by the US polling company, Global Strategy, who was compiling figures for the turnout in that particular polling station; there was no sign of an exit poll being conducted at the same place. BHHRG’s observers were told that between 400 and 500 had voted by mid-afternoon – a very precise tally! It was strange to see the logos on these people’s jackets revealing the names of their sponsors, among which were: ‘USAID’, the ‘Westminster Foundation for Democracy’ and the ‘British Council’. Tax payers in the U.K. and U.S. are ignorant in the main of their governments’ largesse in the ‘new Europe’. Bringing democracy to the ‘savages’ in places like Georgia is probably about as popular with the American public as is paying for hospitals and schools in Iraq. Poorly funded public transport and utilities regularly top voters’ concerns in Britain.

Adjara

False rumours which the OSCE, NDI observer missions allowed to circulate unchecked stated that the Adjaran authorities would not permit observers to operate in the region on 2nd November. “Abashidze has always barred international monitors from observing the election and has banned them once again this year”[29] This lie has even been repeated since the election by the Western media,[30] despite the fact that both the OSCE and NDI had long term observers in Adjara leading up to the poll while teams from both the NDI and OSCE observed the voting on polling day, as did BHHRG.

The international community is unremittingly hostile to the government in Adjara and its president Aslan Abashidze who is regularly referred to as ‘dictatorial’, an ‘aging autocrat’ and ‘iron-fisted’. At the same time, it is grudgingly admitted that the standard of living for ordinary people is far better there than in Georgia proper –there is work and pensions are paid. No doubt, part of this is due to the Adjarans’ luck in having the major port, Batumi, under their control but Abashidze’s policies of smartening up the town and subsidising cultural and educational projects also plays a part. Therefore, it is perfectly understandable for people to enthusiastically support the Revival Party - Mr. Abashidze’s creation – they are well aware of how bad things are in Georgia.

Adjara’s peaceful, (relative) prosperity may have also led other Georgians to seek work in the province. According to the authorities in Batumi, this has led to an increase in the Adjaran population as revealed in a census conducted earlier this year. Abashidze ordered the census as conflicts raged over the electoral lists in Tbilisi. On election day, Adjara had region-wide, computerised lists with photographs of each voter also recorded .[31]

Without any concrete proof and ignoring the factors mentioned above, the foreign observers claimed that the census had inflated the number of voters in Adjara. From this, they deduced that the high turn out in the 2nd December election was rigged. (95%) It is interesting to recall, that when Mr. Shevardnadze (who was the only candidate standing) won the 1992 election as speaker of the Georgian parliament he did so with 95% of the vote. There were no complaints from organizations like the OSCE who inferred that Mr. Shevardnadze was, according to the BBC, “so popular that no one wanted to stand against him”.

It was also alleged that other parties were afraid to campaign in Adjara even though Batumi hosted the offices of several mainstream Georgian political parties. BHHRG visited the offices of the New Rights party on 1st November. The party’s spokesmen said that they had no trouble campaigning and had no interference from the authorities there. They also regarded the National Movement’s decision to campaign in Adjara as a provocation.

BHHRG was told that OSCE and NDI observers had been rude and surly to electoral officials in Adjara on election day. There was also an urgent desire on their part to uncover and expose incidents of election-related violence and abuse. For example, when the NDI representative in Batumi learnt that a brawl had broken out on the night of 2nd November he was keen for it to be confirmed as election related, which was not the case. Similarly, a ‘dispute’ that looked suspiciously like a provocation broke out in one polling station between Giorgi Mshvenieradze, an observer from the Young Lawyers Association (which has an office in Batumi) and local electoral officials. OSCE observers were conveniently on hand when Mshvenieradze was arrested. He was released on 7th December, but only after pressure from Western officials, including the NDI representative in Batumi.

One journalist (who also happened to be the OSCE’s long term observer in Batumi) concluded that the elections in Adjara “proceeded with striking, almost suspicious efficiency” in other words, an election that appeared to be conducted correctly must have been rigged if the winner is damned in the eyes of the West![32]

Before the 23rd November coup, Mr. Abashidze sought to cooperate with Shevardnadze, (normally, there is little love lost between them) in order to try to prevent the inevitable destabilization in the country that was underway. He has distanced himself from the new regime in Tbilisi but, as yet, Adjara has not declared independence on the lines of Abkhazia and South Ossetia nor has Abashidze said he has any intention of going down this path. However, there is a strong animus against him, if only because the ‘reformers’ will want to get their hands on the valuable economic assets, like the port of Batumi. One thing seems sure – if they do regain control of the region it will collapse into the same economically stagnant condition as the rest of Georgia.

The results

Anyone who had failed to take on board the parallel tally of the turnout and count could be forgiven for thinking that the National Movement had won the 2nd November election. Rustavi 2 TV showed an ‘exit poll’ on the evening of 2nd November giving the party the largest share of the vote. As the hours passed and more votes were counted, the percentages for FANG and Revival grew. On Tuesday 4th November the OSCE delivered a damning report on the conduct of the poll, as did the U.S. State Department. When the official results of the vote count were finally announced on 10th November, FANG was in the lead with 21% and the National Movement second with 18% etc.[33] It was a miserable victory for Mr. Shevardnadze’s party – 21% of the vote, hardly indicative of massive ballot stuffing.

Election-related Violence

The media’s sound bite, ‘revolution of roses’, spread the myth that the Georgian coup was non-violent. This is not true. During the campaign, the National Movement regularly incited its supporters into turbulent confrontations with both its political opponents and the police. BHHRG was told that there was a high risk of violence and that the opposition had weapons. On 23rd October, in what was obviously intended to be a provocative move, National Movement activists visited Adjara and there were scuffles with local residents in the seaside town of Kobuleti where the National Movement’s offices were burnt down. Mr. Saakashvili is a critic of the region’s government and he has no support in Adjara. Even some of Shevardnadze’s opponents admitted that the way Saakashvili’s supporters had behaved had been unwise.
Later, on 27th October, there was trouble when National Movement campaigners visited Zugdidi in western Georgia. BHHRG watched television reports which showed several men kicking a car, after which fighting broke out. BHHRG was told that Saakashvili’s supporters were responsible for the incident. Earlier, National Movement campaigners were involved in a fight in the mixed Georgian - Azeri border village of Talaveri. Police claimed to have confiscated 385 passports and identity documents from the NM group which, they said, were in the names of dead people and which, they alleged, were about to be handed out for use on election day, presumably, to Saakashvili supporters.[34] Acts of violence were perpetrated against Revival election workers in Tbilisi and elsewhere and while the media was hailing the peaceful “revolution of roses”, the Revival office in Tbilisi was burnt down and its workers attacked.
On 6th November, Saakashvili took his supporters to the town of Gori, which had still not declared a result. “They tried to burst into the headquarters of the local election commission and were pushed back by police. Taking the building by storm, they smashed a huge plate-glass window, as a result of which one of Saakashvili’s supporters cut an artery and was badly injured”.[35]
Mr Shevardnadze consistently stated that he would do anything to avoid ‘civil war’ and said he had resigned on 23rd November to avoid violence. The same reasoning was given by Russia’s Foreign Minister, Igor Ivanov, for brokering an agreement that led the president to go. Had there been a serious recourse to arms, Mr. Shevardnadze’s erstwhile friends in the West would have undoubtedly pressed for ‘peacekeepers’ to be sent to Georgia which would have effectively represented an invading force.

Since the coup the violence has continued. On 29th November a car bomb damaged the Labour Party headquarters in Tbilisi. The same day, regional offices of the Christian Democratic Party were attacked. There was another explosion outside state television on 3rd December. On 5th December, the counsellor at the Russian embassy in the capital was beaten up and his car was stolen[36] Kmara youths broke into media offices and “staged reprisals” against journalists.[37] It has been noted that all the attacks, so far, have been against organizations and people associated, fairly or not, with the old regime.[38]

When is palace coup not a palace coup when it is a ‘revolution of roses’

As BHHRG and other international observers prepared to leave Tbilisi on 4th November, demonstrations against the ‘falsification’ of the results were beginning. Getting out the crowds was going to be difficult. Some Western-favoured opposition party members even admitted that the Burjanadze-Saakashvili-Zhvania trio was deeply unpopular in the country.[39] So, at first, these gatherings were low key as the organizers relied on the usual crowd of extras, Georgian-style, to express the ‘indignation of the people’: the elderly, disparate youth and (paid) Abkhaz refugees, hundreds of whom live in two hotels situated in central Tbilisi. For a few days they stood uncomfortably outside the city hall as Mikheil Saakashvili ranted on about Mr. Shevardnadze, who he now compared to Ceauşescu and Milosevic. A strike called for 14th November failed to materialize[40] and Radio Free Europe reported that “comparatively few protesters heeded Saakashvili’s demand to form a human chain around the state chancellery”[41] On 18th November, it was reported that “Georgian railroad workers do not support the call for disobedience”[42]

It was clear to those observers who had followed events in Belgrade in 2000 – that a coup was being hatched. However, Shevardnadze’s premature resignation could have derailed the plot. It seems that the president was prevailed upon in the months leading up to the election to hang on, thus ensuring that a proper ‘revolution’ took place which removed him and his government from power and marked a clean break. From a common-sense perspective, there wasn’t any need to force him out as his term of office was due to expire in 2005. No doubt, he could have been prevailed upon to live with a new government more to Western tastes.

But, that was not to be. On 22nd November, parliament was stormed and Mr. Shevardnadze unceremoniously bundled out. During the night of the 22nd November, the Russian Foreign Minister, Igor Ivanov, appeared in Tbilisi and during the following hours managed to broker a deal between the two sides: Shevardnadze agreed to leave office and, as Speaker of the previous parliament, Nino Burjanadze took his place until early presidential elections are held. These have been scheduled for 4th January, 2004 but no date has been set yet for parliamentary elections.

On 23rd November, thousands rallied to observe the final act of the drama outside the Georgian parliament where a large television screen had been erected to transmit to the world the ‘spontaneous’ joy of the people. Interviewed by CNN and the BBC, Mr. Saakashvili hailed the ‘European’ nature of his revolution and the victory of ‘reform’; he had nothing to say to the millions of Georgians to whom he had promised more jobs and a higher standard of living. The BBC’s reporter, Damian Gramaticas, failed to respond with any irony when reporting that Saakashvili had marshalled his supporters at the foot of Stalin’s statue in Gori. There was much gloating in the West over the ‘peaceful’ nature of the ‘revolution of roses’ even though the offices of the Revival Party in Tbilisi were ransacked and its employees attacked. In the following days, more violence was reported.

Almost immediately, government ministers and provincial governors were removed and replaced by opposition placemen.[43] Zurab Nogaideli was re-appointed finance minister, a post he held between 2000 and 2002 when the government was under attack from Mr. Saakashvili for corruption. The traffic police chief in Tbilisi, Gia Vatsadze was also sacked and replaced by Gia Beradze who had held the post in the past.[44] BHHRG noted that the Georgian ‘custom’ of bribing motorists had stopped in recent years. However, it will now presumably start again. On 1st December, Zurab Chiaberashvili, head of ‘Fair Elections’, replaced Nina Devdoriani as Chairman of the CEC. ‘Fair elections’ itself will become, officially, a part of the future election monitoring process.

It is difficult to know what Mr. Shevardnadze thought about such an act of betrayal by his long-term friends in the USA. As he pointed out, he had done everything Washington had asked of him – he was even about to send Georgian troops to Iraq. But, he had been complaining for some time about interference in the election process by, among others, George Soros and his local Open Society Institute. After he left office, he went further and attacked Ambassador Miles for his role in the coup.[45] Of course, his craven behaviour towards the US brought about his downfall. Georgian society is deeply infiltrated by personnel from the West at every level. There is a vast army of people who can cause trouble: the Western-funded civil society outlets, humanitarian organizations, the oil workers, politicians like Saakashvili with freebees to the US and, to cap it all, units in the Georgian military who have been involved in the NATO-sponsored ‘train and equip’ programme. Poured into this bubbling cauldron were millions of dollars, distributed selectively to some or all of them to bring about a change of regime.

Not long ago, Washington-engineered coups were conducted in a clandestine manner as interference in the internal affairs of foreign states was regarded as too sensitive to admit. Now, freelance vigilante groups, reminiscent of Mussolini’s blackshirts, are funded by the West to intimidate ordinary people and harry legitimately elected governments. In a recent article, Otpor activist, Slobodan Djinovic hailed Kmara’s role in the Georgian coup and announced that “we are working with civil movements in several countries”, presumably to bring about similar results.[46]

Many heads of state, particularly those in other post-Communist states, should be looking over their backs with alarm. There are already straws in the wind. In Ukraine, “Yulia Tymoshenko, described as a ‘radical opposition leader’ called on the Ukrainian authorities to learn the Georgian lesson”[47]. Critics of Belarus’s President Lukashenko have also jumped on the band wagon. Added to which, the conduct of Armenian presidential elections has been attacked by the West and, most recently, Azerbaijan looked as though it might take the Georgian route as violence erupted after the presidential election held on 15th October, 2003. Although the government in Baku (unlike Georgia) has the money to pay its own police and security organs, Azerbaijan is still vulnerable to outside interference should the decision be taken to implode it.

Russia and the Great Game

Anti-Russian sentiment in Georgia is weak, despite the rhetoric from the victorious opposition parties and their supporters many of whom - like Nino Burjanadze, are the children of former Communist bigwigs. Hard-line, nationalist Zviadists have always been anti-Russian but by 1996 even followers of the former president admitted to BHHRG that most ordinary people in Georgia would welcome the return of the Soviet Union with its basic economic certainties. As Russian Foreign Minister Ivanov has also pointed out, there are many Russians living in Georgia and c.300,000 Georgians in Russia. Those who have fled the disastrous economic situation in Georgia have tended to move north rather than West, although there is also a large community of Georgians in Israel.

The shift in the West’s positive attitude to the Shevardnadze regime seems to have begun in 1999, soon after Vladimir Putin came to power in Russia. Putin won the presidential election in March 1999 and parliamentary elections were held in Georgia the following November. For the first time, international observers seriously criticised aspects of its conduct. BHHRG also noted that the West’s affection for Ukraine’s president, Leonid Kuchma, dimmed around the same time. Presumably, there was wariness of the new Russian president, about whom, it seems, they new little. The fear must have been that Putin might try to re-exert Russia’s influence in the former Soviet republics. As members of an older generation, neither Kuchma nor Shevardnadze had any explicit contacts with Putin, but old Soviet hands were members of their respective governments. BHHRG was told repeatedly by the ‘opposition’ in Tbilisi, from 2001 onwards, that they disapproved of people like State Counsellor, Vazha Lortkipanidze who was close to Shevardnadze, and whom they perceived to be a friend of Russia.

In Georgia, members of the Western-funded and approved opposition as well as their tame NGOs dwelt on their concerns that Russia was trying to re-establish its former dominant role in local politics. Members of the Kmara youth organization expressed their ‘dismay’ at Russia’s bombing of guerrilla positions in the Kodori and Pankisi Gorge regions of the country in 2001. Much was also made of the recent purchase of the country’s electricity system by the Russian conglomerate, Unified Energy Systems (UES) which had bought out the failed American company AES Telasi in September 2003.[48] This was followed up with a deal between the Georgian government and Gazprom.

Members of the Burjanadze Democrats told BHHRG that the Georgian government had not supported AES, resulting in its failure to improve the country’s electricity supply. The murder of Nika Lominadze, the company’s financial manager in August 2002 was the ‘last straw’. They also pointed to recent provocative remarks by UES boss, Anatoli Chubais, who had talked of a “new, liberal Russian empire” in the making, based on Russia’s ability to meet CIS energy requirements.

But, this interpretation of Georgia’s energy woes leaves much out. AES bought into Georgia failing to realise that there were no longer any large enterprises left to generate a decent level of profit while the average domestic consumer was unable to pay the fuel bills. The company was reduced to disconnecting large numbers of small consumers from the grid. The Georgian government did not obstruct AES which, anyway, received subventions from the US taxpayer to ensure that it didn’t leave earlier than Washington wanted it to. In the end, Chubais’s UES did AES a favour by taking the loss-making company’s Georgian operation off its hands. BHHRG visited the offices of UES where the employees still seemed to be in shock following AES’s departure. Loyalty to the new owners had not yet taken hold as Valeri Pantsulaia, AES’s commercial manager, told the Group that he preferred working for the US company.

However, explanations that the Americans change of heart over the Shevardnadze regime was based on energy considerations and Russian rivalry fails to take into account the fact that the anti-Shevardnadze campaign was well underway in 2001, two years before Gazprom and Mr Chubais arrived on the scene.

However, Russia is the country that should be most concerned about the events in Georgia. The position of Mr. Ivanov is hard to fathom – he also brokered a similar deal that led to Milosevic conceding defeat after the 2000 presidential poll in Yugoslavia. But Georgia is not Yugoslavia. Analysts have been perversely trying to show that Russia is the ‘winner’ following the November coup, but this is the opposite of the truth. The U.S. and its NATO allies now have more leeway than ever before to interfere in Georgia and the surrounding Caucasus region. Allowing this coup to happen on its doorstep could be very costly for Russia.

There is, indeed, rivalry between the West and Russia over the construction and route of oil and gas pipelines as well as other energy-related matters which have been put into a harsher perspective by the failure to subdue Iraq and fully exploit its oil reserves as planned. The Americans may have decided to divert their attention to what seems to be a much softer target, namely, Russia, and take control of her abundant energy resources sooner than they anticipated.

Conclusion

It is the common assumption that Mikheil Saakashvili will win the 4th January presidential election in Georgia with an Abashidze-size proportion of the vote – which, in this case, no one will query. Large donations to cover the cost of the poll have been pledged by Western governments. However, it seems perverse for the new regime to rush into a presidential election while putting the parliamentary poll on the ‘back burner’, so to speak. The present parliament’s mandate ended in November and a replacement should be elected as soon as possible. As pointed out, Mr. Shevardnadze’s presidential term was not due to end until 2005.

There is also the added peculiarity that the Constitutional Court which voided the election only targeted the proportional part of the 2nd November vote, leaving the majoritarian results standing. Mr Abashidze has remarked on the illogicality of this decision as the alleged deficiencies with the 2nd November election must have covered all aspects of the poll. For example, why should the election registers be deemed inaccurate when people were voting for candidates on the proportional list while remaining acceptable for those who won as majoritarians? Presumably, the ‘opposition’ gained enough support in the latter part of the poll for them to want to hang on to the results. In addition to this strange bit of logic chopping, the CEC has made the startling proposal “for voters to be offered financial incentives to register by entering them into a draw”.[49] Why should voters need “financial incentives” to register to vote? Reports in the pre-election period said that the average Georgian was desperate to vote and furious with the authorities for the chaos that surrounded the compilation of the electoral register.

With the presidential election behind it, the new government in Tbilisi will then set about expelling the two remaining Russian bases at Batumi and Akhalkalaki. Perhaps Georgia will also be admitted speedily to NATO. Until then, more foreign troops, possibly under NATO command, will be ‘invited’ into the country. There is evidence that the OSCE has long-term plans too to significantly increase its presence there – a recent advertisement in the Georgian English-language press announced tenders for the construction of 17 missions “some of them reachable by helicopter only”.[50]

There is also a strong possibility that the installation of a new regime in Tbilisi will be accompanied by an intensification of the war in Chechnya. During the night of 2nd-3rd December, fugitive Russian businessman, Boris Berezovsky, paid a dramatic 6 hour visit to Tbilisi. Although Berezovsky now has asylum in the U.K. he is still wanted on an Interpol warrant and, according to Moscow, he should have been arrested and handed over to the Russians. Some Georgian politicians have suggested that Berezovsky’s visit was not unconnected with the Chechen cause – he is a well-known supporter of the rebels.[51] Alexander Litvinenko, a member of Berezovsky’s entourage, who also lives in the U.K., has said that “it is necessary to sow hatred among the nations and levy war in the Caucasus”[52].

But the international community no longer puts pressure on the Chechen ‘freedom fighters’ - it only seems to encourage them. Another figure on Moscow’s terrorism ‘wanted list’, Akhmed Zakayev, spokesman for ousted Chechen president, Aslan Maskhadov , was also given asylum by the British government recently. It is Mr. Putin who is criticized and ordered to stop the ‘atrocities’, seemingly committed exclusively by Russian troops. The West’s aim is to drive Moscow’s representatives out of Chechnya. After that, other parts of the north Caucasus will be put under pressure from ‘separatists’ in order, as Alexander Litvinenko says “to destroy Russia”.[53]


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Notes

1 "A decade of graft and decline in post-Soviet Georgia" Scott Peterson Christian Science Monitor, 21st February, 2001
2 “Potemkin Democracy: Four Myths about Post-Soviet Georgia", Charles King, National Interest, Summer 2001; Also see: "A Hero to the West, A Villain at Home", Peter Baker, IHT, 14 April, 2001; "Strength in Numbers" Wendell Stevenson, Time Magazine, 29th November, 2001.
3 Financial Times, 27th November 2000
4 ibid “Profile AES-Telasi: US investor helps warm the nation”
5 ibid
6 ibid
7 ibid
8 “Georgia embraces democracy” Zhurab Zhvania, CIS LawNotes, June 1997
9 “Modern Georgia’s Young Founding Fathers” Stephen Kinzer, New York Times, 4th June 1998
10 Georgian Television, Tbilisi 18th November 2001
[1] See BHHRG’s Georgia reports, www.oscewatch.org
[2] see. IWPR, Caucasus report 15th May, 2003, www.iwpr.net
[3] Natia Jokhadze, “Deconstructing Tbilisi”, ToL, 29th October, 2003, www.tol.cz
[4] Zeno Baran, “Georgia:High Stakes for U.S. Credibility”, The National Interest, 13th November 2003. Ms. Baran later married the US diplomat, Matthew Bryza, who was responsible for Caucasus policy. In November, 2007, anti-Saakashvili demonstrators made scurrilous allegations against them.
[5] “Shevardnadze to Speak at Rice’s Baker Institute April 22”. Visit to Rice's James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. April 22, 1999, www.rice.edu/projects/reno/Newsrel/1999
[6] Simon Sebag Montefiore “Shevardnadze was respected – but never loved – by Georgians”, Daily Telegraph, 25th November, 2003
[7] Jeremy Druker “Who’s Afraid of the British Helsinki Group” Transitions, February, 1999
[8] Natalia Antelava “United States Cuts Development Aid to Georgia”, www.eurasianet.org. 29/9/03
[9] BHHRG, discussions with Kmara representatives, Tbilisi 29th October, 2003
[10] Georgia 1999: Parliamentary Elections, www.oscewatch.org
[11] RFE/RL 29th September, 1999, www.rferl.org
[12] See, Rustavi 2 reported in www.bbcmonitoring.co.uk. 6th December 2003
[13] Zviad Pochkhua “Georgia human-rights organization accused of meddling”, Daily Georgian Times, 1st May, 2003
[14] See report “Twilight of Shevardnadze” www.oscewatch.org (2001)
[15] See, www.batuminews.com, 30th October, 2003
[16] “Voter List Discrepancies Cast Pall Over Georgia’s Parliamentary Vote” www.kvali.com
[17] Natalia Antelava, “Dead Man Voting” www.tol.cz, 27/10/03
[18] “U.S.: Pre-Election Delegation’s Statement ” 7th October, 2003, www.civil.ge
[19] See IFES press statement, 28th October, 2003 www.ifes.org
[20] Liz Fuller “Falsification Fears Overshadow Georgian Parliamentary Election” 31th October, 2003, www.rferl.org
[21] RFE/RL 3rd November,2003
[22] Giorgi Kandelaki: US Pressure Helps Achieve Breakthrough in Georgian Domestic Political Dispute” www.eurasianet.org 18th July, 2003, “US Suggests Election Guidelines to Georgia” www.civil.ge 7th July, 2003
[23] Rustavi 2 reported on RFE/RL, 3rd November, 2003, www.rferl.org
[24] See NDI statement, ibid
[25] “President Folsom praises Venezualan Civil Society’s Defense of Democracy” IRI press release 12th April 2002, www.iri.org
[26] AOL Daily News 19th November 2003
[27] “Election Commission Cancels Accreditation of Main Independent Television station”, www.eurasianet.com 14/11/03
[28] See, Georgia, Parliamentary Election 2003: BHHRG’s Preliminary Statement, www.oscewatch.org
[29] “Dead Man Voting”, ibid
[30] “Ye shall not be saved” The Economist, 22nd November, 2003
[31] see NDI statement, ibid
[32] Daan van der Schriek “Quiet Election in Adjara Prompts Worries of Tampering” www.eurasianet.org
[33] The results for the proportional list were: FANG – 21.32%, Revival Union – 18.84%, Saakashvili, National Movement – 18.8%, Labour Party – 12.4%, Burjanadze Democrats – 8.79%, New Rights – 7.35%
[34] Tea Gularidze “Election Campaign Turns Violent”, www.civil.ge.
[35] Kvali Online magazine www.kvali.com, 7th November, 2003
[36] www.bbcmonitoring.org 5th December, 2003
[37] RFE/RL, 27th November, 2003, www.rferl.org
[38] Zaza Baazov “Georgia’: Counter-Revolution Fears”, IWPR, 4th December, 2003, www.iwpr.net
[39] Irakli Areshidze “Who Lost, and Won, in Georgia”, Wall Street Journal, 25th November, 2003
[40] RFE/RE 14th November, 2003, www.referl.org
[41] RFE/RL 14th November 2003, www.refrel,org
[42] Interfax 18th November, 2003, www.bbcmonitoirng.co.uk
[43] “Georgia: All but one regional governors have been dismissed” Rustavi 2, 27/11/03
[44] “Traffic police chief sacked…” www.bbcmonitoring.co.uk 28th November 2003
[45] “Georgia’s Shevardnadze Feared Bloodbath”, Burt Herman, AP, 26th November, 2003. See also, “Georgia revolt carried mark of Soros”, Mark MacKinnon The Globe & Mail, 26th November, 2003 www.theglobeandmail.com

[46] Natalia Anteleva “How to stage a revolution” http://news.bbc.co.uk, 4th December 2003
[47] “Opposition ponders Georgian scenario in Ukraine” UNIAN news agency Kiev, 24th November,2003 www.bbcmonitoring.co.uk
[48] Jean-Christophe Peuch, “Georgia: Smell of Russian Gas Hangs over Election Campaign”, www.rferl.org. , 13th June, 2003, Dima bit-Suleiman “Georgia:Russian Hands on the Switches”, www.tol.cz 11th August, 2003
[49] Rustavi , 7th December, 2003, www.bbcmonitoring.co.uk
[50] OSCE advertisement, The Messenger, 4th November 2003
[51] “Exiled Russian tycoon may’ve had contacts with Chechen rebels in Georgia – view” Interfax, 6th December, 2003 www.bbcmonitoring.co.uk
[52] Quoted in “Chechnya: Whose Islamists are they anyway?” www.oscewatch.org News Item, 14th October, 2003
[53] www.oscewatch.org 14th October 2003, ibid.