The current political crisis in Georgia is both a catastrophic result of the policy of the Georgian authorities of all shades and a triumph of US policy.
The political crisis in Georgia already seems to be a constant phenomenon. A feverish tremor of protests is shaking almost all major cities of the country – from Batumi to Tbilisi. They are protesting for a variety of reasons – against the curfew and against the ruling party, against the construction of the Namakhvani hydroelectric power station and against the opposition party “United National Movement”, i.e. the party of “Sahakists” (they are “Mischists”).
The soil for this mess is the most fertile. The pandemic has annihilated the tourist season. The same pandemic has multiplied the Georgian health care system by zero. It has recently become known that Georgia’s national debt has broken a historic record. Every fifth inhabitant of the country lives below the poverty line. At the same time, this indicator in a country that revels in its undeserved pride about vino and other things, in rural areas is about 25%.
According to forecasts, 2021 will become even more difficult for Georgia than 2020. The fact is that proud Georgians, who do not allow some Russians to trample their land, travel to Turkey on a regular basis to harvest nuts and tea. When the borders were closed, then this trickle of currency dried up. Some experts are starting to talk that the country may face a real threat of hunger.
In addition, a serious demographic problem is often forgotten. Since the days of the USSR, the population has almost halved. People are fleeing the country. And not only to Europe, blessed by the authorities, but also to Turkey, which is facilitated by a variety of scholarship programs with a religious flavor from Erdogan.
All these phenomena were weighed down by the characteristic “wisdom” of the local authorities. For example, when the population expressed reasonable doubts about the very chances of a successful tourist season, the authorities convinced them to prepare for the arrival of tourists. And not some “bastard Russians”, but European ones. As a result, almost the last money was spent on hotel renovations, alcohol and so on, but the tourists never came. The season was remembered only by the fact of the rape of a German woman near the Black Rocks Lake on the territory of the reserve. Oh, this stereotypical Georgian hospitality for me…
The Georgian political forces blame each other for the political crisis and the plight of the country. The piquancy of the situation is that the political struggle in Georgia is like replacing beds in a brothel, rather than replacing girls. The modern Georgian opposition is a tangle of parties, the core of which is the United National Movement. Not so long ago, the UNM itself was the ruling party created by the notorious Saakashvili.
In those days, by the same methods that the UNM itself is now using, the Georgian Dream opposed it. Now the Georgian Dream is the ruling party. At the same time, in their strategic goals, these supposedly opposing forces do not have any differences. Both UNM and Dream are in favor of imposing “Western values”, integration into NATO and the EU, and so on.
In fact, the political clearing was cleared long ago. The first purges took place during the struggle between the nationalist Zviad Gamsakhurdia and the party changeling Eduard Shevardnadze. Later, the “democrat” Saakashvili was also a fan of cleaning the site. Under him, a real new wave of political emigration followed. For example, the leader of Ajaria, Aslan Abashidze, who was holding back the expansion of the Turks and did not want to paint a target for Russia on his land to please NATO, Saakashvili was called a “killer and drug dealer”. Without waiting for arrest and torture, Aslan left Adjara, having flown to Russia.
And all these purges took place with the blessing of the United States and its allies. Not a single mouthful of human rights defenders fed by Western “democrats” has been open against outright repression.
And no matter how much EU representative Christian Danielsson fusses, observing the ritual of mediation between the opposition and the Georgian authorities, the crisis does not subside. But this crisis is a de facto triumph of American politics. For thirty years, the Yankees have worked so skillfully to establish a vassal position of Georgia that they now, even formally, in Danielson’s style, do not need to interfere.
Whoever comes to power in Georgia, the strategic anti-Russian and openly NATO course will not change one degree. The paradigm “war to the last Georgian” (Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Latvian – insert the right one) works smoothly. There is simply nothing to fail, and the impoverished population, either on its own initiative to let off steam on the street, or for a small share, is always ready to work as extras on the political stage.
Sergey Monastyrev, specially for News Front