Burjanadze: Some in West have Fallen into Saakashvili’s Trap

Nino Burjanadze, leader of Democratic Movement-United Georgia, says in her article in The National Interests (published by Washington-based Nixon Center), that “some of our Western partners do not yet understand that Saakashvili is building a Soviet-style regime… undermining the very Western values that he routinely invokes.”

In the article, former parliamentary speaker, writes that the Georgian opposition has often heard from “our friends and partners abroad that we have become radicalized and thus threaten the stability and even the future of the country.”

“But our “radicalism,” if that is the right word, is intended to end the instability our country faces rather than exacerbate it,” she says.

In the article Burjanadze argues that President Saakashvili tries to portray his opponents as “dangerous radicals” or as “unpatriotic” in the face of Russia’s policies against Georgia.

“Many ordinary Georgians and even more people abroad accept at least part of his [Saakashvili’s] argument, fearful that if they do not support him, they are not supporting Georgia,” Burjanadze says. “That is a false choice, and Saakashvili knows it. But many people, including some internationally respected institutions such as the Jamestown Foundation and the Economist, have fallen into his trap.”

Burjanadze is apparently referring to the Economist’s recent article about developments in Georgia under the headline “The Opposition Locks Itself Up, and Out” in which an author writes that Georgia’s “impetuous president, wins by keeping his cool.” In the article Burjanadze is described as leader of “radical wing of the opposition” and “the country’s least popular politicians. The same article also says: “Ordinary Georgians associate her with the Soviet-era nomenklatura.”

The Washington-based think-tank Jamestown Foundation frequently runs articles about Georgia developments in its Eurasia Daily Monitor publication. Those articles, authored by Jamestown Foundation senior fellow, Vladimir Socor, are mainly critical to the opposition.

Burjanadze writes in her article that Saakashvili is restricting media freedom and “staging the kind of elections that only a dictator could love.”

“For these reasons, the Georgian opposition, the “radicals” in the eyes of many, demand that Saakashvili resign because he has violated his oath and his commitment to the Georgian people,” she writes.

She also says that a new revolution will be “dangerous and potentially disastrous” for Georgia and lists among the opposition’s goals: pulling Georgia back from “the precipice of civil unrest” and ending of “authoritarianism in the country” and establishment of democracy through creation of institutions and values that “allow us to hold leaders accountable.”

“The Georgian opposition is not fighting against Saakashvili; we are fighting for freedom and democracy, for control over the fate of our country and our lives,” Burjanadze writes.

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