The small country Georgia has a complicated identity. The body is in Asia, while the heart is in Europe. Throw conspiracy rhetorician and violent cynic Vladimir Putin into this equation and we have a recipe for trouble. And the pictures from the capital Tbilisi speak for themselves. Opposition leader Levan Khabeishvili is one of many who have had their faces smeared by riot police. He protested that the government will introduce laws that label democracy advocates and independent media as “foreign agents”. Just as Putin did in Russia from 2012. It was the legal preparations for today’s brutal dictatorship in Russia.
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East or West. Dictatorship or democracy. These are the questions Georgia, somewhat simplified, now faces. In the first instance, it is organizations and media that receive more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad that will be labeled as “foreign agents” if the parliament votes for the government’s proposal for the third time this May. The EU strongly condemns the government’s use of violence, and foreign minister Josep Borrell reminds that Georgia is a candidate member, and in principle on its way to join the union. And that it is a status and a privilege that obligates. 80 per cent of Georgians want to join the EU and NATO, and link up with the West.
The problem is that it may well happen that the government will not, despite assurances that it will. Georgia, with its population of less than four million, has had a complicated relationship with its former colonial power Russia, after it broke away from the Soviet Union in 1991.
In 2003, Mikheil Saakashvili elected president after the Rose Revolution. He was strongly pro-Western, while effectively fighting corruption. He immediately made an enemy in Russian President Vladimir Putin. So strong was the animosity that Saakashvili is the only man Putin has said he will “hang by the balls”. And here there is reason to believe that the Russian president is telling the truth.
In 2008 started the arrogant Saakashvili a campaign against South Ossetia, an autonomous region of Georgia under international law, which Russia had taken control of. Putin’s response was brutal, and after a few days Russian tanks stood outside the Georgian capital Tbilisi. His point was clear; no one challenges Putin within what he considers Russia’s sphere of influence. Dot. A point he then – as is known – repeated in Ukraine.
– Now or never
At the 2012 election Georgia’s voters were tired of the constant conflicts with its close trading partner Russia, and the “Georgia’s Dream” party led by Bidzina Ivanishvili won. Ivanishvili is a wealthy oligarch who made his money in Russia in the 1990s. He has since controlled the party, which still leads a majority coalition in parliament. It is this party that will introduce “Putin laws”, and it is under their government that Saakashvili was imprisoned in 2021 and is now only an emaciated shadow of himself. He himself says that he has been poisoned in prison.
Ivanishvili confirmed far on his Putin agenda when he surprisingly took the magazine out of his mouth on Wednesday, saying that a “global war party” has its “decisive influence on NATO and the EU”. It was uncharacteristic openness from a man who is known to rule from behind the scenes with the prime minister and the government as his straw men.
It is this the furious demonstrations, and the brutal manner in which they are put down, are about in Georgia. Formally, it says “Putin law”. But in reality the battle is about an almost one-party system, where the government controls the courts and the press, on the one hand, and an open, liberal society, on the other. Perhaps the most serious consequence if the law is passed is that the press will become more unidirectional. The state-controlled media receive state support, while the independent press, which generally has little advertising income, often receives support from foundations with connections abroad, support that Ivanishvili wants to stop.
But the fight is not decided. Firstly, the EU now speaks a clear and distinct language, and an overwhelming majority of Georgians will associate themselves with the West and not Russia. Voters were fed up with Saakashvili’s constant outbursts, and economic and other wars against Russia. But in the autumn there are again elections for the parliament. And the street battles in the beautiful Rustaveli Avenue in the capital Tbilisi remind voters of what is at stake.
