Opinion Editorials, November 2003, www.aljazeerah.info
Human Price of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine
Israeli daily aggression on the Palestinian people
Mission and meaning of Al-Jazeerah
Cities, localities, and tourist attractions
Revolution Haunts the Land of Monsters and Poets
Robert Parsons
The Guardian, Arab News
LONDON, 25 November 2003 — The feeling of deja vu in Georgia this weekend was overpowering. A president harried from office, massive crowds on the streets, the almost palpable fear of civil war hanging in the air, the threats of force, gatherings of menacing-looking men in black leather jackets, Parliament stormed. Just like in 1992, when newly independent Georgia fragmented into a confusing and bloody struggle for power.
Tragedy, it seems, clings to Georgia’s political leaders. Eduard Shevardnadze’s departure need never have been like this. Although he is still lauded in the West for his part in the end of the Cold War, Georgians have always been more equivocal in their assessment of his character and abilities. Yet when he returned to power in 1992 they accepted him, albeit grudgingly. They understood he was a giant on their tiny Caucasian stage.
Shevardnadze, however, frittered away their trust, surrounding himself in the end with familiar yes-men from his Communist Party past. The opportunity was there to groom another generation for power, but he took fright when the young politicians he introduced into office developed ideas of their own.
He retreated into the security of his old cabal, expelling the young pretenders into what he hoped was the wilderness. This weekend they have come back to haunt him. Georgians have a keen sense of theater and a subtle understanding of the nuances of Shakespearean tragedy — remember the huge success of Robert Sturua’s Rustaveli Theater in Britain and elsewhere in the 1980s and 90s. Today they are comparing Shevardnadze to King Lear — a lonely, disconsolate figure, surrounded by fawning courtiers and hopelessly out of touch with reality.
Surely, no one could help but pity him on Saturday as he was swept out of Parliament by his bodyguards, his white hair wild and disheveled, whistled at and jeered by the crowd. I recalled his arrival back in Georgia in 1992. Then, too, he had been surrounded by bodyguards, but he had been full of hope. He said then that he wanted to be remembered as the man who led his country to success and prosperity. Eleven years on, he briefly and impotently threatened to use force against the opposition crowds that had filled the city center and taken control of the Parliament and government buildings. It was his one last card, but he knew that if he used it he would drag his country into another civil war. Was that really the way this once-great man wanted to be remembered?
Tragedy, too, was the lot of his predecessor, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, the dissident imprisoned by Shevardnadze when he was first party secretary of the Georgian Communist party. Gamsakhurdia led Georgia to independence and then retreated into a world of paranoia, tormented apparently by Manana, his powerful wife. They compared Gamsakhurdia to Macbeth.
Georgia is a land of beguiling beauty, wedged between Russia and the Caucasus mountains to the north, and Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan to the south. Its Black Sea coast should be a subtropical paradise, but its tea plantations and mandarin groves have fallen into decay. It is a land of monsters and poets. The same country that gave Stalin and Beria to the world produced many of the Soviet Union’s most celebrated writers, artists and filmmakers.
The country’s record since independence has been desperately disappointing. Corruption is a problem in all of the former Soviet republics, but in Georgia it has eaten at the country’s soul, undermining repeated efforts at reform. According to independent assessments, it now rates as one of the 10 most corrupt countries in the world. Much responsibility for that rests with Shevardnadze. He repeatedly described it as his country’s greatest curse and promised, time after time, that he would fight it to the bitter end. But these were empty words.
The IMF and the World Bank, without which the Georgian economy could barely survive, repeatedly told Shevardnadze that success in the fight against corruption was the key to future loans and aid. But nothing was done. The corruption spread into his own family and Shevardnadze lacked the energy to stamp it out.
As in many traditional societies where the rule of law is weak, family and social ties count for far more in Georgia than allegiance to the state. The tradition of dzmakatsoba, or loyalty to one’s inner circle of friends, has meshed powerfully with the post-Soviet market economy.
The question now is whether any of this will change under the new generation of politicians ushered in by Georgia’s “velvet revolution”. Today, Georgia is a basket case, which has received $1 billion of US aid in the past 10 years, more than any other country per head except Israel. But it needn’t always be like that. When still ruled from Moscow, it had the best educated population in the Soviet Union. Its vineyards and orchards could once more compete effectively in the markets of Russia and Eastern Europe.
Most encouraging of all is the birth of civil society. Indeed, some argue that it is the emergence of civil society in Georgia which ultimately ensured Shevardnadze’s downfall. The irony is that he made it possible.
There is greater freedom of speech in Georgia than almost any other former Soviet republic. The election campaign was marked by a high level of participation. Television coverage of the issues was lively and informative.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python. (Alquds,10/25/03). |
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