South China Morning Post
May 15, 2005
PR coup in the Rose Kingdom An epic public welcome for President Bush
was a triumph for Georgia’s young leader. But the discovery later of
an unexploded grenade is a reminder that the country is a powder keg.
Fred Weir reports
Over the past 16 years Tbilisi’s main square has been the venue for
most key events of local history. They include a brutal 1989 massacre
of Georgian dissidents by KGB troops, a bloody post-Soviet civil war
that devastated the ancient city’s centre and, most recently, the
euphoric “Rose Revolution” that vaulted a young American-trained
lawyer, Mikhail Saakashvili, into power.
But Freedom Square had never witnessed anything like the epic
welcoming party laid on – partly at the expense of American taxpayers
– for visiting President George W. Bush last Tuesday.
Nearly 250,000 people crammed into the vast circular space next to
Georgia’s parliament to greet Mr Bush, roaring chants of “Bushi,
Bushi” and waving thousands of American and red-and-white Georgian
flags.
To thunderous cheers, Mr Saakashvili introduced his American guest as
“a freedom fighter”. Mr Bush returned the compliment, hailing the
Georgian president “who has shown such spirit, determination and
leadership in the cause of freedom”.
At the height of the festivities someone, unseen in the crowd, tossed
a Soviet army-issue hand grenade that landed within 100 metres of the
two presidents. It failed to detonate, but left behind the
unmistakable suggestion that all may not be well in Mr Saakashvili’s
Rose Kingdom.
Many regional experts say the democratic revolution orchestrated by
Mr Saakashvili, which overthrew the incompetent and kleptocratic
regime of Eduard Shevardnadze in November 2003, was largely political
smoke and mirrors.
Though the telegenic, polyglot, 38-year-old Mr Saakashvili has proven
adept at charming western leaders and talking up global democratic
revolution, his own regime has veered towards autocracy and left the
majority of Georgians mired in poverty, with unemployment rates of
about 45 per cent.
“We are witnessing a triumph of public relations, which has nothing
to do with the real world of Georgian politics or the actual struggle
for democracy in the world,” says Alexander Iskanderyan, a Georgia
expert and director of the Centre for Caucasian Studies based in
Yerevan, Armenia.
“Saakashvili is a PR genius, who turns words into gold. His goal is
to grab media attention and secure foreign aid. He’s doing that very
well,” he says.
A graduate of Soviet-era Kiev University, Mr Saakashvili went on to
study law in the United States at Columbia and George Washington
universities, before going to work with a New York law firm in the
mid-1990s. But he was soon attracted to Georgian politics, won a
parliamentary seat in 1996, and quickly became a leading member of
the ruling party and a protege of president Shevardnaze.
Georgia, a mountainous, ethnically diverse country of 5 million, was
once known as “the fruit basket of the USSR”, famous for its lush
agriculture, sweet wines, thick Borzhomi mineral water and
sub-tropical Black Sea tourist resorts.
After the Soviet collapse Georgia dissolved in civil strife and
separatist war. Two regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, won de facto
independence from Tbilisi following bloody conflicts. Another
province, Ajaria, largely ruled its own affairs. Chechen rebels from
Russia took over another rugged mountain area, the Pankisi Gorge, and
the disaffected Armenian region of Samtskhe -Javakheti threatened to
break away.
Mr Shevardnadze, a silver-haired former Soviet foreign minister, came
to power following the bitter civil war in 1992, pledging to
introduce sweeping democratic reforms and free-market economics.
Though it seems largely forgotten today, during his decade in power
he was considered a key regional ally by American leaders, who made
Georgia the third-largest recipient of US aid after Israel and Egypt,
and sent a brigade of US special forces to train the Georgian army.
“In his time Shevardnadze was treated as a democratic hero by the
Americans, as Saakashvili is today,” says Sergei Mikheyev, a regional
expert with the independent Centre for Political Technologies in
Moscow. “Shevardnadze tried to build democracy, but he was
overwhelmed by separatism, corruption, economic paralysis – all the
problems that still plague Georgia.
“At some point he became unsuitable to the Americans and Saakashvili,
who is totally oriented towards the US, took his place in their
hearts.”
A 2000 opinion poll found Mr Saakashvili, then minister of justice,
to be the second most popular politician in Georgia after Mr
Shevardnadze. Many analysts identified him as Mr Shevardnadze’s heir
apparent, but in 2001 he resigned from the government, citing
pervasive official corruption and Mr Shevardnadze’s inability to deal
with it.
In November 2003, following a parliamentary election that most
observers regarded as rigged in favour of pro-Shevardnadze parties,
Mr Saakashvili and several close political allies organised three
weeks of relentless – but peaceful – street demonstrations around
Freedom Square that ultimately forced an exhausted Mr Shevardnadze to
resign.
Mr Saakashvili’s tribute to his former mentor bore not a hint of
revolutionary rage: “History will judge him kindly.”
The next January Mr Saakashvili was elected, in virtually uncontested
polls, with a staggering 97 per cent of the popular vote. The two
main separatist regions did not participate, but most experts judged
the result a mostly genuine product of the euphoric hopes generated
by the Rose Revolution.
A few months later Mr Saakashvili staged another coup, by peacefully
deposing the independence-minded leader of Ajaria and restoring the
Black Sea region, and Georgia’s main oil terminal, to central rule.
“Saakashvili has accomplished some notable things. He increased
pensions and fired half the traffic police, which dramatically
slashed corruption,” Mr Iskanderyan says.
“On the other hand, Georgia is less democratic today than it was
under Shevardnadze. Censorship has grown, critical journalists are
being persecuted, media outlets are being shut down.”
Some worry that Mr Saakashvili’s confrontational stance towards
breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which were largely allowed to
go their own ways under Mr Shevardnadze, could re-ignite the savage
ethnic wars of the early 1990s. The two provinces are backed by
Moscow, and a majority of the population in both carry Russian
passports.
Mr Saakashvili has also pressed the Kremlin to close down two
Soviet-era Russian military bases on Georgian soil. Moscow’s
reticence on this issue led Mr Saakashvili to angrily boycott last
week’s Red Square celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Soviet
victory over Nazi Germany hosted by Vladimir Putin.
“Shevardnadze was wise and realistic, but Saakashvili seems
overconfident,” Mr Mikheyev says. “If he tries to put his rhetoric
into practice, there will be trouble” – including possible conflict
with Russia.
“Any military attempt to force Abkhazia and South Ossetia back under
Tbilisi’s rule could lead to massive bloodshed.”
But as last week’s extravaganza on Freedom Square shows, Mr
Saakashvili is a rising star in Mr Bush’s global democracy crusade.
In a much-quoted article in The Washington Post last week, Mr
Saakashvili called for “a new Yalta Conference” to end the cold-war
division of Europe, export freedom to still -oppressed regions of the
former Soviet Union such as Belarus and Moldova, and foment
democratic revolts as far afield as “Zimbabwe, Cuba and Myanmar”.
“Georgia today is a failing state, without electricity or central
heating,” says Vyacheslav Nikonov, director of the independent
Politika Foundation in Moscow. “But what does that matter when
Saakashvili is adored by the world media and fjted by George Bush as
living proof that his democracy campaign is a great success?”