Page 70 - bne magazine November 2021_20211104 uzbekistan risding

70 I Eurasia bne November 2021
Graffiti of Mikheil Saakashvili.
Saakashvili’s return:
more shrewd than it seemed?
“[The protest] was the largest I have ever seen myself,” said Shota Utiashvili,
a senior fellow at the Tbilisi-based Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies. “Some people who were around in April 1989 [during the largest anti-Soviet demonstrations] told me it reminded them of back then,” he added.
“I would say there were 40,000,
maybe even 50,000 people,” said Iago Kachkachishvili, director of the Institute of Social Studies and Analysis, a Tbilisi- based think tank. “It was certainly very different from past [UNM protests].”
The exact timing of Saakashvili’s return initially seems a bit surprising: at an election, but not one where he himself was on the ballot, as was the case
most recently with the 2020 national election, when he was nominated by the UNM-led Strength in Unity bloc as their choice for prime minister.
Analysts see a weakening grip by the former president on Georgia’s political scene as the primary motivation. They argue the need to refocus the opposition around both the UNM and – perhaps more importantly – himself, played
a major role in Saakashvili’s return.
“I was somewhat surprised by his return, but it had to happen eventually,” said Utiashvili. “As a politician, [Saakashvili] understood that the time where he could lead the Georgian opposition from abroad was ending. He had to either leave Georgian politics or come back,” he said.
“[Saakashvili’s] resources in Georgian politics were dwindling,” Kachkachishvili agreed. “He knew that his arrival would result in prison, but he could not do more from abroad than the current results,” where the UNM has traditionally received about 25% of the vote and rarely more. “He needed his supporters to see him in Georgia itself,” Kachkachishvili said.
Perhaps most crucially, the comeback has changed the perception of Saakashvili in some corners of Georgian society: from an exiled playboy to a political prisoner.
“Misha’s mode of political existence has changed now,” said Kachkachishvili. “He
Neil Hauer in Tbilisi
There’s rarely a dull moment in Georgian politics, but even by those lofty standards, October is already a month to remember.
As with so many events in Georgia, the past few weeks in the South Caucasus republic have centred on one man: Mikheil Saakashvili. The larger-than- life former president who headed the country from 2003 to 2012 has spent the past eight years in exile in Ukraine, during which time he both gave up his Georgian citizenship and was convicted in absentia of abuse of power.
Ever since, Saakashvili (or simply Misha, as he’s commonly known) has promised time and again to return to Georgia, always failing to follow through. Despite maintaining control of his United National Movement (UNM) – Georgia’s primary opposition party and the main challenger to the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) – Saakashvili had been forced to operate from abroad.
All that changed on October 1, when the ex-president abruptly posted
a video from Georgia’s coastal city of Batumi, announcing he had at long
last arrived in the country ahead of nationwide local elections the following day. A cat-and-mouse game with the
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ruling authorities ensued over the
next hours, until a beaming Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili, head of the present GD administration, announced that Saakashvili had been arrested.
A smiling Saakashvili was marched
into a prison near the capital and the vote went ahead the following day.
Momentum then built slowly. Saakashvili announced a hunger strike, while several thousand supporters –
a sizable, yet not overwhelming number – came out to protest for his release on October 4. The next week and a half passed calmly, until October 14. That day, UNM organizers gathered
a truly massive crowd on Tbilisi’s Freedom Square. Tens of thousands of demonstrators, their numbers bolstered by provincial arrivals from other parts of Georgia, stretched out for kilometres down the capital’s Rustaveli Avenue, calling for Saakashvili’s release.
The largest demonstration in at least a decade in Georgia has set the scene for what should be a highly contested runoff vote on October 30 – but how much has it really changed the game?
For Georgian observers, the October 14 demonstration was far beyond expectations.