Page 67 - bne monthly magazine June 2024 Russian Despair Index

bne June 2024 Eurasia I 67
was under the control of “foreign agents” – foreign funded NGOs that form Georgia’s vibrant civil society that has flourished since the Rose Revolution that brought Saakashvili to power and aligned Georgia with the West.
“Georgia should be governed by
people who are elected by Georgians. From 2004-2012 we were governed
by a foreign-appointed revolutionary committee. They came to power as
a result of an NGO-led revolution,” Ivanishvili said. Ivanishvili claimed that "all crimes committed by the Saakashvili regime were orchestrated from abroad".
The oligarch, who had in recent years kept behind the scenes, specifically assumed responsibility for the Russia-styled “foreign agents law” and new legislation targeting the LGBT community that has also received strong backing from the Georgian Orthodox church.
Georgia has been struggling to come to terms EU requirements to show more tolerance to its gay community, and has cancelled its gay pride march in the last few years due to the threat of violence from right-wing groups, which the police have made little effort to control. The government also cracked down
on “LGBTQ+ propaganda” in March in another move that mirrors Russia’s anti-gay laws.
Second time lucky
Following the Rose Revolution, Georgia was seen as the poster boy for liberal reform in the Former Soviet Union (FSU). Saakashvili famously sacked the entire traffic police force and ended the rampant bribes taking place overnight. Under another former Georgian-born Russian oligarch, Kakha Bendukidze, the entire legal framework was overhauled and streamlined, sending Georgia shooting up the World Bank’s “Ease of Doing Business” ranking.
But Saakashvili was also accused of authoritarianism and Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream defeated his United National Movement in the 2012 elections. Saakashvili was forced to flee the country, but returned later only to be arrested on abuse of power charges.
He is now in jail, where supporters fear for his life as his health deteriorates.
In his speech, Ivanishvili called out the United National Movement by name and linked it to the "Party of War", indicating that he intends to use the foreign agents law to suppress Saakashvili’s party.
“Today, these foreigners are motivated by the desire to bring back the inhumane and sadistic dictatorship
of the same people to Georgia, which we will not allow at any cost. When we talk about greenlighting, we should also remember that the [UNM] regime’s sadism enjoyed the full support of the NGOs,” Ivanishvili said.
Tensions in the Georgian capital are high and rising as the law has already passed the first of three readings. A day earlier an estimated 20,000 protesters gathered in front of the parliament building to call on the government to abandon its effort to pass the law for a second time.
The EU has warned Georgia that the foreign agents bill could block the country’s accession hopes. The European Parliament passed a resolution last week calling for the accession talks to be frozen as long as the foreign agents law remains on the books.
Brussels is not yet ready to abandon Georgia, which it wants to include in the Western-allied bloc to counter Russia’s influence in the region. Russia has already de facto annexed two of Georgia’s regions – Abkhazia and South Ossetia – following a short war with
Lukashenko, wants to retain political autonomy and is accusing the West of meddling in Georgia’s internal affairs.
Ivanishvili made his billions in Russia, before returning to his homeland
in 2002 to go into politics. He is Georgia’s richest man and has wielded considerable influence in Georgia for a decade.
Anti-government protestors have marched under Georgian and EU
flags, in demonstrations some see
as reminiscent of the start of the EuroMaidan protests in Kyiv in 2014 that eventually caused the then President Viktor Yanukovych to flee the country after he likewise abandoned
a path to the EU by rejecting the Association Agreement and took a large loan from Russia instead.
The government tried to pass the same law last year but was forced to abandon the attempt in the face of mass protests. It promised to refrain from introducing the law again, a promise it has since reneged on.
Renta crowd
Roads to Tbilisi were choked by an armada of buses and minivans as the government bussed in people from
all over the country to make up the numbers. An estimated total of 53,000 pro-government supporters attended, according to eye-witness accounts posted on social media.
In a sign of the orchestration the government was putting into its rally,
“The EU has warned Georgia that the foreign agents bill could block the country’s accession hopes.”
Georgia under Saakashvili in August 2008. However, the EU is becoming increasingly unhappy with Ivanishvili’s Russian proclivities.
For his part, Ivanishvili remains lukewarm but still officially in favour of accession to the EU and Nato. But at the same time, he, like Belarus President Alexander
pedestrians in central Tbilisi were surprised during the day when the public tannoy system suddenly played
a loud round of applause for no reason. According to reports on social media, officials were preparing for the evenings rally and intended to use canned applause to bolster the crowd’s reaction to planned speeches by Georgian Dream leaders.
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