This week has been quite eventful for Georgia, most notably because of different women raising their voices on various pressing issues. The past few days, however, also featured new guidelines on how to escape the turmoil safely, as well as some very unsafe ways to escape justice.
This is the Dispatch with Nini, to conclude yet another turbulent week on Georgian record.
THE ARRIVAL The week’s highlight was the visit of German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who apparently rushed to Tbilisi to express support for Georgia’s EU bid, but also to look into the eyes of local leaders to find out what is that they really want. Arriving from cautious and measured Berlin, the diplomat was so unusually vocal in expressing her country’s support of our EU integration that we are afraid our excessively self-obsessed leaders might take credit for that: look, it’s after you stop bowing to the Western whims and starting practicing self-love that they begin to value you. Yeah, the “TO EUROPE WITH HONOR” slogan works!
But it was clear from the minister’s remarks that rather than the egocentric fantasies of our rulers, it was the EU-flag-waving citizens from recent protests that caught her attention. And it was warnings, not presents, that she came to deliver: her strong expression of support is a chance that Georgians might blow again should the government fail to show progress on vital twelve EU-requested reforms. FM Baerbock killed the government’s hopes that a “merit-based” approach (i.e. looking at the technical sides of approximation and ignoring Georgia’s democratic woes) would get them into the EU. She also denied the (naive) hopes of the civil society for the EU to grant the status to “the Georgian people” despite their government’s sabotage: “Georgian government can’t become EU member without civil society, and civil society can’t become EU member without the government” was one of German foreign minister’s key messages.
EWW! GROUP ACTIVITIES To achieve those goals of EU membership, Baerbock reiterated usual Western calls for depolarization, joint efforts, public debate, listening, etc.. etc. in short, the usual calls from the Europeans that sometimes, for good reasons, elicit irritation, frustration, and calls for more clarity. For those who feel threatened by the government, such calls may feel like the bitter episode from childhood when you call your parents to protect from the sibling who bullies you, only to get the neutral “kids, stop fighting” response instead of fair intervention and, why not, arbitration. If the guilty party is not named, then justice is not served. And how is listening even going to help? Will it make the ruling party’s policies any less sabotaging if we offer its billionaire founder free hugs and a shoulder to cry on about his problems with the Swiss bank? Quite unlikely.
Yet still, the West may be right in acknowledging the problem: polarization has long become the most effective tool of powerful political actors to retain their influence. And over the past years and months, the usage of this tool expanded from nurturing routine political infightings to digging deeper and wider public divisions, by now infecting every aspect of human life. This alienation makes the communication of even individual concerns or traumas nearly impossible, leaving everyone alone, misunderstood, or ignored by those fellow citizens who identify with the opposing political camp. The politicians feed and exist on those divisions and have little incentive to suddenly “depolarize.” But with the situation becoming ever more damaging for the social fabric with every passing day, so it may be (again) up to civil society to find ways for (re)building confidence.
SIRENS WAILING Past weeks saw multiple examples of the poisonous effects of attempts to fuel such divisions: writer Dato Turashvili ended up in hospital with heart troubles after becoming a target of pro-government trolls; pro-government media dusted off the notorious Cartographers’ Case to further ruin the lives of implicated former civil servants while pursuing the goals of attacking the opposition.
Now it also became twice as hard for women to speak up about sexual abuse: aside from usual distrust and victim-blaming attitudes, they also have to deal with all the political dirt: women are not believed because they are women, because they speak up against powerful men, and because they are perceived as aiding the cause of an opposing political group.
Several women recently spoke up about sexual harassment from the major pro-government TV propagandist, Shalva Ramishvili. Who promptly exacted a perverse (how fitting) revenge: last night the crew of Ramishvili’s PosTV made a fake report to police alleging that Dimitri Chikovani, a member of the opposition United National Movement, kidnapped Tatia Samkharadze, one of the survivors who had won a sexual harassment case against Ramishvili back in 2018. Three pro-government TV mouthpieces ran the story on top of their newscasts, smearing Chikovani for infidelity, painting Samkharadze as immoral, and hinting at a UNM scheme to smear Ramishvili with harassment claims.
Samkharadze said following the incident that her safety “as a women’s rights defender” was “under threat” in Georgia, promising to reveal more details after consulting with lawyers.
ESCAPE ROUTES The dirty games by the Georgian Dream-team have gotten so extreme that the chances are they will backfire as the foreign agent bills did. Going after civil society organizations after softening ground with the barrage of media defamation as “rich” and “intransparent,” GD thought nobody would stand up for that. But they were wrong… if only they had some advisers to talk them out of it?
Well, now they got lots of them: the GD MPs with enough common sense not to vote for “foreign agent” bills handed in their mandates and took up the positions of advisers. Two of them, Vladimer Chachibaia and Nino Iobashvili will be advising the prime minister, and Giorgi Khelashvili will help the parliament chairman with his expertise. The latter might be the luckier one, though – if we trust President Zurabishvili’s recent admission, Garibashvili may not be the easiest guy to talk to.
Okay, there’s a chance that none of these three will have to do the consultancy work: their repositioning is following the recent trend of ruling party MPs safely exiting the scene without…well, making a scene. The departures from the opposing camp, tend to be noisier. In her long-overdue announcement, MP Khatia Dekanoidze parted ways with the United National Movement, speaking frankly against the recent change in leadership. UNM leader Levan Khabeishvili complained at the timing not being right and Dekanoidze playing into Ivanishvili’s hands. But it was Khabeishvili’s ascension to the leadership two months ago and the public reappearance of some odious UNM figures that many saw as playing into Ivanishvili’s hands (which in UNM’s terminology is synonymous with playing into the Kremlin’s hands).
And so it goes, in the public eye everyone is playing someone’s game, few may hope to have agency, and there is no escape. No wonder the wildest conspiracies mushroom and govern Georgia’s political life… Perhaps with women speaking up more the hallucinogenic spores would fade? May it happen before the last of us still hold out hope.
