GEORGIA The parable of Georgian Dream

The ruling party in Tbilisi celebrates the anniversary of its founding. Since 2021 its promoter, the pro-Russian oligarch Bidzina Ivanišvili, has completely withdrawn from public life and from any position, although in practice he continues to control that political force. The critics of the opponents: a country that cannot free itself from the clans in power and the weakness of the alternatives, all of them linked to Saakashvili.

Tbilisi () – The ruling party in Tbilisi, “Georgian Dream”, celebrates the eleventh anniversary of its founding, when the pro-Russian oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili presented his new team and won the 2012 elections. The leaders of that time and the current ones they repeat their promise to act in such a way that “power consistently defends the homeland, the church and national values”, although the opposition considers that they have long ago renounced those principles, for personal interests and submission to the will of the Kremlin .

The full name of the party is “The Georgian Dream of a Democratic Georgia”, which was born precisely at the initiative of the billionaire, who is now 67 years old. Ivanishvili began building his fortune selling computers in post-Soviet Russia in the early 1990s and retained that citizenship. He returned to his homeland during the “Rose revolution” in 2004 and decided to go into politics when President Mikhail Saakashvili, currently in prison and in serious health condition, tried to amend the Constitution to stay in power. In retaliation, the latter deprived the businessman of Georgian citizenship (he also had French citizenship), and the new party was formally headed by his wife, Ekaterina Khvedelidze.

After winning the elections, in which he obtained 55% of the votes with a coalition of various groups, Ivanishvili held the post of prime minister for only a year and a half, until the end of 2013, after which he dedicated himself to the “social sector ” of politics -among other things to avoid conflicts of interest, as the opposition affirms-. Since 2021 he has completely withdrawn from public life and from any position, although in practice he continues to control the party and to a large extent the government itself. Today all Georgian Dream leaders enthusiastically express their gratitude to him at every opportunity, official or informal, and through all social channels, for freeing the country from the “bloody regime” of Saakashvili’s National Movement, accused of trying to continue armed confrontations with Russia to recover Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

The most outstanding praise came from Prime Minister Iraklij Garibashvili, according to whom “the coalition that triumphed in 2012 was the beginning of the most important processes in the political and social life of our country, because we were able to launch a true national policy, strengthen our sovereignty, guarantee the peace and freedom of citizens and save Georgia from total destruction”. The current president of the party, Iraklij Kobakhidze, obviously agreed, recalling that the Georgian Dream government “is the only one that has governed the country without waging wars since its independence, preserving peace in the harsh geopolitical conditions of the entire region. “, in obvious reference to the war in Ukraine, in which the current government in Tbilisi is trying to maintain a balance between the parties.

However, the Georgian political scientist Gija Khukhashvili, one of the inspirers of the formation of the new party 11 years ago, today is very critical of the ruling leadership, and considers that over the years it has betrayed expectations of renewal: “The protagonists after the great victory of 2012 they have been progressively eliminated from the party, today there are none left, and since 2016 others have been taking the reins, even sterilizing the influence of Ivanishvili himself”. In fact, instead of reforming the institutions, the leaders of the Georgian Dream “cared only for their own stay in power, and all reasonable politicians have distanced themselves… Today we have an ochlocracy, run by behind-the-scenes puppeteers.”

Georgij Vashadze, chairman of the “Agmashenebeli Strategy” party – referring to the glorious 12th-century Georgian monarch, the holy builder of the capital Tbilisi – compares the rule of the past 11 years to a “continual sinking and revival of the country, like a Titanic that reappears again and again among the ice unable to resume its course”. Georgia fails to restore justice and free itself from the ruling clans, all of them dependent on Russian influence. Like Khukhashvili, Vashadze especially laments the weakness of the oppositions, all related to Saakashvili’s controversial personality, who are unable to find a way to stop the “Georgian Dream” celebrations.

Photo: Flikr/Marco Fieber