#11
Time Europe
December 3, 2001
Strength in Numbers
Letter From Tbilisi: Protests are forcing change in Georgia's government, but the people want more
BY WENDELL STEAVENSON

On Sunday nights in Georgia nearly everyone stays in to watch TV. First there’s a satirical cartoon called Dardubella, featuring the animated antics of President Eduard Shevardnadze and his hapless ministers. Then comes 60 Minutes, an anticorruption program that investigates everything from dodgy privatization schemes to police bribery scams.

Both are produced by Rustavi 2, a fiercely independent TV channel much unloved by the government. Often the focus of the exposés has been feared Interior Minister Kakha Targamadze, who in October went on air in a Rustavi 2 studio to accuse the channel of "treason" and to threaten, "We will shut you down!"

Targamadze had become the unsavory symbol of a Shevardnadze government beset by corruption, ineptitude and vested interests, particularly the interests of the Shevardnadze family. "Since '97, [when post-civil war economic recovery started to slow] there has been little progress," explains Alex Rondeli, a political commentator for the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies. "People expected reforms. There was hope — and then everything stopped." Unemployment, unpaid salaries, beggarly pensions, a collapsing infrastructure and severe electricity shortages plagued the long-suffering population. People worried about getting kerosene in the winter or medicines for sick relatives. And they watched, bitterly, as ministers built grand dachas and drove around in Mercedes. Shevardnadze talked of anticorruption committees, but no official was ever prosecuted. Ongoing complications in the relationship between Russia and separatist statelet Abkhazia, after violence broke out in a remote part of that region in October, have further confused Shevardnadze's position.

Apart from his stint as Soviet Foreign Minister from 1985 to 1991, Shevardnadze has ruled Georgia for the past 29 years, initially as First Secretary of the Georgian Socialist Republic's Communist Party. Things had been the same for so long that it seemed they would never change. But at the end of October, Rustavi 2 was raided by agents from the Security Ministry — and loyal viewers decided they had had enough. Thousands took to the streets in protest. Shevardnadze, facing a popular crisis, fired his entire cabinet.

"The public finally saw that they have power in this country," says Akaki Gogichaishvili, producer of 60 Minutes. But how much had really changed after the dismissals? By the time Shevardnadze had named his "new" cabinet, reappointing most ministers and replacing Targamadze with one of the former Interior Minister's deputies, the debate had shifted. Parliamentary factions realigned amid deals and odd alliances, and no one could figure out who exactly was the opposition anymore. Two points of view emerged: reform vs. status quo.

"We want to choose a different way of life from this old Soviet bureaucracy," says Zurab Zhvania, the former speaker of Parliament who resigned in order to distance himself from Shevardnadze's policies. "The balance of power should be with Parliament." He is echoed by Mikhail Saakashvili, a young Western-thinking leader in Parliament and one of Georgia's few genuinely popular politicians. "We cannot imagine Shevardnadze maintaining his wide powers," he says. The reformers envision a strong Parliament headed by an elected prime minister. Shevardnadze, on the other hand, would prefer the P.M. to be appointed by the president, as under the system in neighboring Russia.

Nonetheless, constitutional change would be virtually impossible to get through the factionalized parliament. The reformers want early parliamentary elections. But parliamentary elections are dangerous in unstable Georgia, where intimidation and ballot stuffing are common. The reformers must tread a difficult path between appealing to popular frustration and polarizing the debate.

Georgians well remember the civil war of the early '90s. They remember too that Shevardnadze restored order. For years they resisted demonstrations for fear of reviving the years of strife. Now there may be an opportunity for people power to make a difference. But as commentator Rondeli points out, "Shevardnadze always knows how to use critical situations for his benefit and always finds a way to survive." Perhaps, as former speaker Zhvania hopes, "Shevardnadze is pragmatic enough to realize what realistically can be expected."

The popular hope is that the balance of power in Georgia has genuinely shifted to the parliament via the people. But perhaps a more realistic expectation is that Shevardnadze will prevail, as ever, jostled by feudal alliances, clans and political expediency as old as Georgia itself.