TV Makes Parallel Between Kmara and Fandarast
Alania TV, the Tbilisi-based television station targeting audiences in breakaway South Ossetia, showed a story on August 9 about the Georgian youth movement, Kmara, which played an important role in mobilizing public opinion ahead of the 2003 Rose Revolution through its aggressive campaigning.
The broadcast of the story coincided with the opening of a branch office of Kokoity Fandarast (?Godspeed?, in Ossetian) movement in Georgia?s second largest town, Kutaisi, on August 9.
The movement, which is affiliated with the Tbilisi-backed South Ossetian provisional administration, aims, according to its founders, at ?getting rid of Eduard Kokoity? ? the secessionist South Ossetian leader ? through peaceful public campaigning. In this sense, the movement reassembles Kmara (Enough). The latter was also a driving force behind public protests against the former Adjarian leader, Aslan Abashidze, in 2004. The movement was disbanded shortly after Abashidze fled to Russia.
In the report, Alania TV interviewed some former activists of the Kmara movement. One of them, Giorgi Kandelaki, said that Kmara?s experience of campaigning in Adjara would be ?especially valuable? for Kokoity Fandarast. ?Because Abashidze?s regime and the one in Tskhinvali are somehow similar,? he said.
Kokoity, however, said while speaking with journalists on August 8 about the Fandarast movement: ?I want to assure you that I will outlive all these movements.?
This post is also available in: ქართული (Georgian) Русский (Russian)
