An Authoritarian Thorn in the Caucasus
11/23/24
By: Daniel Miller
As my fellow Americans re-elected a megalomaniacal insurrectionist, who bullies our democratic allies and grovels at Vladimir Putin’s feet, the people of Moldova repudiated Moscow’s encroachment by re-electing President Sandu and enshrining the path to European Union (EU) integration. Across the brackish waters of the Black Sea, the people of Georgia – including the breakaway region of Abkhazia – are rejecting the ruling Georgian Dream party’s drift towards authoritarianism. As protests have erupted on multiple days since the election a few weeks ago, the discontent became even more palpable in Tbilisi a few hours after police and special forces violently dispersed protesters blocking a vital traffic intersection in front of Tbilisi State University, during the early morning hours of Tuesday, November 19th.
That may have been enough to stop them right then, but word traveled fast and a crowd several times larger than the night before congregated a few blocks down the road a few hours later.
I came back about 6:20 am to see everyone pretending to hold strong but breathe a collective sigh of relief once the street lights turned off. That’s when they all decided to go home before the sun came up.
Despite claims by many dense, anti-Western conspiracy theorists that NATO, the CIA, the US government, and George Soros are somehow brainwashing the masses into mobilizing against the government, the simple truth is that the protesters are demanding a new round of parliamentary elections free from corruption. The election held on October 26th was rife with claims of irregularities, voter intimidation, and ballot stuffing, with one such incident having been caught on video and the perpetrator subsequently arrested.
That same video was used as part of a larger lawsuit against the Central Election Commission (CEC) involving eleven allegations of ballot stuffing and addressing the irregularities, which soon made its way to a Tbilisi court. On Thursday, November 14th, despite the overwhelming evidence to support the opposition’s lawsuit, the judge – who has close connections to members of the Georgian Dream party – ruled that they had no standing and the election results shall be honored. Two days later, the CEC certified the election results, prompting opposition member David Kirtadze – in typical Eastern European fashion – to throw black paint at the face and body of commission chairman Giorgi Kalandarishvili. As Kalandarishvili stood there looking like he just finished fighting an octopus, Kirtadze was escorted out of the room.
November 14th has been a significant date in recent Georgian history. 35 years ago, the Supreme Council of the Georgian SSR declared its sovereignty over the republic’s laws, outright rejecting Soviet authority over its legal framework and reflecting the Georgian people’s aspirations for democracy and human rights. The following year, controversial nationalist and anti-Soviet dissident, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, became Chairman of the Supreme Council of Georgia and would later become the country’s first president in May 1991.
A staunch advocate for Georgian independence and human rights, Gamsakhurdia received overwhelming support from ethnic Georgians as he was elected president. However, this same support was rejected by the Abkhazians and Ossetians in the north, who expressed a desire for their own independence movements, albeit cynically fueled by the Kremlin.
Gamsakhurdia’s hardline stance on national unity mirrored that of neighboring Turkey’s revered first president, Kemal Attatürk. He viewed Abkhazians and Ossetians south of the Caucasus Mountains with the same kind of contempt as Attatürk had with the Kurds and Armenians. Separatist tensions, which were largely instigated and cynically supported by the Kremlin, had been brewing in both regions since the Soviet Union’s hegemony began rapidly declining in the late ‘80s. Sanguinary conflicts ensued at different times between an insufficient Georgian military and the separatist militias aided by Russia.
Both wars ended several months after they started, with Russia mediating both ceasefire agreements. The agreements stipulated that both regions would function as de facto independent states with Russian troops permanently stationed there – much like the Transnistrian situation in Moldova’s east. However, unlike Transnistria, Russia, along with a handful of other nations that harbor an anti-Western bias, recognize their independence from Georgia.
In 2008, in response to a majority of the international community recognizing Kosovo’s independence from Serbia, Putin approved military campaigns to “liberate” ethnic Russians from “genocide” perpetrated by the Georgian government. Putin could technically argue that they were ethnic Russians because the Kremlin began issuing citizens of both regions Russian passports in the early ‘90s – the exact same scheme used in Transnistria and Ukraine. Russia even managed to go beyond South Ossetia and occupy Joseph Stalin’s hometown, Gori, with the occupation ending after a ceasefire agreement brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy pushed Russia back north.
Both regions have since served as Russian client states and are almost completely supported financially by the Kremlin. Recently, the towering Abkhazian president, Aslan Bzhania, was met with an angry mob of protesters who quickly captured several government buildings and used a truck to ram down the gates of parliament, which soon forced his resignation. The people were upset at a proposed bill that would allow Russian citizens to purchase property in Sokhumi, the capital city, free of taxation. The residents of Sokhumi were livid that the move would drive up the cost of living for everyone else, so they forced Bzhania to abdicate. Imagine what the people of Tbilisi could accomplish in response to the parliamentary election that was riddled with irregularities, intimidation, and ballot stuffing…
The number of protests started increasing a couple of days before the fatuous ruling by the judge and will continue well into the last week of November as the new Parliament convenes on Monday, the 25th. They have all remained without conflict except for the morning of Tuesday the 19th when the police cleared out tents and barriers set up by protesters. 16 were arrested and a few were injured. However, the Georgian people remained defiant and reconvened down the street a few hours later and stayed overnight until the street lights cut off. The weekend is already starting off strong, with protesters successfully blocking traffic and partying around Hero Square. As the people fight for free and fair elections, let’s hope this same kind of vigor spreads to countries like mine because they are going to need it.
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