GEORGIA: Shevardnadze resigns amid mass protests

December 10, 2003
Issue 

BY RUPEN SAVOULIAN

Opposition supporters stormed Georgia's parliament on November 23 and took it over, forcing President Eduard Shevardnadze, who held the position since 1993, to flee. Tens of thousands of protesters outside demanded his resignation. The main trigger for the eruption of popular anger was a blatantly fraudulent election on November 2 in which the pro-Shevardnadze parties claimed victory.

Shevardnadze's ouster came after three weeks of persistent mass street protests demanding new elections. Sections of the Georgian ruling class and the security forces abandoned Shevardnadze in early November. The Georgian army and police force declared they would not obey orders from Shevardnadze to fire on crowds of protesters.

Vote-rigging is nothing new in Georgia, but the fraudulence of the November 2 election cost Shevardnadze the already waning support of the United States government. Washington had committed US$2.4 million to help conduct the election.

Even before the election, high-level US delegations had visited the Georgian capital Tbilisi to ensure that whoever won would continue Georgia's pro-US course.

The Georgia office of the National Democratic Institute (NDI), one of the key non-government organisations that helped organise the ousting of Shevardnadze, is funded by the US government. The NDI has been providing "democracy training" in Georgia since the mid-1990s.

Opposition leader Mikhail Saakashvili, who led the invasion of the parliamentary chamber, is pro-Western and committed to continuing Shevardnadze's neoliberal capitalist program. A lawyer, he studied in the USA and France. A former head of Tbilisi council, he was appointed justice minister by Shevardnadze in 2000, but quit the government the following year, forming the United National Movement.

Saakashvili represents a new generation of bourgeois politicians, young and impatient to push aside the older Soviet-era leaders like Shevardnadze in order to occupy their positions (and get hold of the lucrative salaries and privileges that go with them).

On July 12, eight opposition parties united in a loose alliance with the stated goal of "promoting democracy" in Georgia. These parties all have bases of support in the non-government organisations that have sprung up since the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union. Many have been supported by US and other Western foundations, producing a class of young, English-speaking intellectuals deeply committed to neoliberal capitalist measures.

Chief among these is the Liberty Institute, funded by the US government and billionaire financier George Soros. It became the opposition organising juggernaut, along with the NDI, to push Shevardnadze out of office.

How the institute and its directors, Levan Ramishvili and Giga Bokeria, changed from being Shevardnadze supporters to opponents is the story of the forces that channelled ordinary Georgians' anger at the ravages of neoliberalism into support for another set of politicians committed to the same program.

Fuelled by grants from the US Agency for International Development-backed Eurasia Foundation, Soros' Open Society Institute and others, the Liberty Institute did much of the backroom work on Saakashvili's "reform" program.

In the aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse, former Soviet foreign minister Shevardnadze returned to his Georgian homeland promising a new beginning. Georgians were impressed with how he had protected Georgia's culture and language from Russification during his time in Moscow, and for his peaceful handling of the Soviet break-up.

US officials also valued Shevardnadze. His reputation as the man who helped end Soviet "communism" gave investors confidence in his rule. His stated intention to move Georgia out of Russia's orbit and into Western institutions, such as the NATO and the European Union, played well in Washington.

In 1995 and 1996, Georgia received a series of crucial loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

However, Shevardnadze supporters such as Ramishvili and Bokeria were becoming disenchanted as Shevardnadze's regime became increasingly corrupt.

In 1996, Bokeria and Ramishvili were hired by a new independent television station, Rustavi 2. After it attacked a Shevardnadze minister, the government closed the station down. Bokeria and Ramishvili founded the Liberty Institute, initially to organise the station's defence.

Post-Soviet Georgia

Georgia is one of the many failing capitalist states that have emerged after the breakup of the USSR. Before 1989, the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic was prosperous, enjoying a relatively favourable position within the Soviet Union. It was one of the few Soviet producers of wine, brandy and many kinds of fruit. The ban on travel to the outside world meant that Georgia, with its spectacular mountains and beaches, also attracted a large proportion Soviet tourists.

Today, Georgia has one of the lowest standards of living in the world. Roads outside Tbilisi are falling apart. Electricity blackouts are frequent. Pensioners must survive on the equivalent of around A$12 a month. Bribes must be paid to acquire everything from a driver's license to a passport.

The United Nations released a detailed report in 1999 that documented the human and social catastrophe that erupted throughout the ex-Soviet states after 1991. While Western governments and mass media describe Georgia as being in "transition", which implies that something positive is around the corner, the UN document revealed that the majority of people in Georgia and the other ex-Soviet states were going through something akin to the Great Depression.

The turn to a "free market" regime was supposed to improve economic efficiency and accelerate economic growth. But it has had the opposite effect: investment has collapsed, production has fallen sharply and growth rates are negative. The precipitous decline in industrial output has resulted in a dramatic increase in unemployment and inequality. Since 1989, 1 million people have left Georgia, mainly the most educated.

This is the result of the "economic reform" package implemented by the capitalist regime in Georgia, with the support of the US and international financial institutions.

Criminal forces have grown more organised and professional, redirecting their energies into business. In fact, the majority of the new business class in Georgia has its origins in the criminal arena. The gross domestic product has shrunk by two-thirds, while up to 80% of the economy is illicit.

Oil

The level of corruption in Georgia is making it difficult for even US oil and gas multinationals to invest safely.

Since the fall of the USSR, the Caucasus region has been the centre of a ferocious struggle between Russia and the USA and its allies for control over its oil and gas reserves. In this power struggle, Georgia occupies a key position. This small country of nearly 5 million people is strategically located on the Black Sea, south of Russia and north of Turkey.

Georgia is the intended destination of an oil pipeline from the landlocked Caspian Sea in the east to Georgia's ports on the Black Sea. US oil multinationals want to construct this pipeline and thus secure control of the massive oil and natural gas deposits located in the Caspian.

A Soviet-era pipeline runs from the Azerbaijani capital Baku, north into Russian territory, then west to the Black Sea port of Novorossisk, running through the troubled region of Chechnya. Anxious to build a more secure route, a major priority for the US is the construction of an oil pipeline from Azerbaijan on the Caspian Sea, via Georgia, to Turkey and the Mediterranean, thus bypassing Russia. A consortium led by British Petroleum, the US-based ChevronTexaco and other oil multinationals are part of the project.

Russia remains a key power in the region. Earlier in 2003, Russia's state-controlled electricity company, Unified Energy Systems, led push to buy oil and gas interests in the Caucasus, especially in Georgia. The expansion of Russia's economic influence in Georgia was seen as a direct challenge to US economic interests in the region.

Shevardnadze's ousting has brought a more reliable and popular pro-US grouping to power in Georgia, providing assurances to US and other Western oil multinationals that they will continue to have access to Georgian territory as a transit route for oil.

Military cooperation

Moscow and Washington have also been jockeying for military influence in the region. Between 1992 and 1994, Georgia lost control of parts of its territory. In the north-west, Abkhazia fought a secessionist war and gained its independence. Another region inhabited by an ethnic minority, South Ossetia, which is in the north, broke away. Ajaria, a Muslim enclave in the south, on the border with Turkey, successfully fought for independence in 1994.

All these secessionist movements received the covert support of the Russian military. To counter Russia's military pressure, Shevardnadze courted the US military and repeatedly stated his intention to join NATO.

After September 11, 2001, Shevardnadze opportunistically began to claim that al Qaeda militants were operating from Georgian soil, participating on the side of independence-seeking fighters in Russian-occupied Chechnya, which borders Georgia to the north.

This had the desired effect. In March 2002, US military advisers and instructors landed in Georgia to begin training a Georgian rapid reaction force. NATO also staged military exercises in Georgia in early 2002, signalling the country's increased strategic and military importance to Washington.

Since September 11, 2001, the Russian air force has bombed Georgia three times, ostensibly because Georgia refuses to co-operate with Russia against Chechen independence fighters who have taken refuge in Georgia's rugged Pankisi Gorge. The Russian military still maintains Soviet-era bases on Georgian territory.

Moscow and Washington treat Georgia, along with other ex-Soviet republics, like pieces on a chessboard. Russia moves, then the US responds, and vice versa. The game is played out in the form of wars, coups and "velvet revolutions". The ultimate goal of both sides is to gain economic and military supremacy in the strategic region.

The new Saakashvili administration is committed to continuing Georgia's perilous, pro-US capitalist course. The Georgian people's justified and legitimate anger and resentment at the Shevardnadze regime's neoliberal austerity and corruption have been sidetracked for the moment. However, the economic and political crisis in Georgia is by no means over.

From Green Left Weekly, December 10, 2003.
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