Friday, October 19, 2007, #200 (1467)

The Messenger interviews: Giga Bokeria
By Messenger Staff

Controversial MP Giga Bokeria is frequently named as the most influential force in parliament—something he calls a common misperception. Bokeria, a highly visible face of the ruling National Movement party, sat down with the Messenger for an extended interview in his parliament office.

Holding an unlit cigarette and speaking rapidly, the 35-year-old Rose Revolution co-leader offered expansive responses on questions ranging from the government’s policy platform, to the political turmoil surrounding the arrest of ex-minister Irakli Okruashvili, to the deadly September 20 clash near Upper Abkhazia.
Questions and responses have been edited for length and clarity.

TM: Many pundits call you the ruling party’s chief ideologist. Is that accurate?
GB: No, of course it’s not accurate. Anyway, people can call me whatever they want. But it’s a substantially incorrect description. First the chief, then the ideologist… I prefer to speak of values.
Speaking of values, what were the biggest successes of this government in the past four years?
To summarize shortly, it’s bringing back the sense of ownership to the citizens of Georgia, that this country is owned by them.
There is, of course, taking away the imminent danger that we had in our country of a local, homegrown—but of course supported from abroad —dictator: [Adjaran ruler Aslan] Abashidze. It was a big breakthrough. All the reforms that we’ve had, starting from law enforcement, continuing with education, now with health care, criminal justice… Those are all big breakthroughs. And of course the investment climate, deregulation. [The] clampdown on institutional corruption that we had.

Do you expect to win another majority in the next parliamentary election?
We will certainly work for it. For a politician to just expect that, he won’t get it.

Could you explain the electoral reforms the president proposed on October 16?
First thing was lowering the [vote] threshold [for parliamentary representation] and I think the president made it very clear why he thinks it could have a positive effect. First of all it became like a cliche, everybody understands our political opposition in Georgia is very weak and indeed it is. There are several reasons for that… The threshold is not the main one.

Is this a concession to the political opposition?
No, because they’re not demanding that already for more than one year. That’s their point. Their consistent point is, “We’re not interested in the threshold.”
This is a chance for the future to unlock our political spectrum in Georgia, to unlock particularly oppositional spectrums, to allow more flexibility for new groups or splinter groups within to reemerge and push the opposition to higher grounds with regards to democratic culture.
I think that’s a big challenge, we’ve moved ahead in many respects, particularly with democratic reforms and building liberal democracy. But the level of democratic culture inside the political class in general, including the ruling party, deserves to be improved significantly.

Why did the president propose extending parliament’s term to hold parliamentary and presidential elections simultaneously? How will it help civic society? When the one-off rescheduling decision was made in 2006, your justification was avoiding the Russian parliamentary elections.
Yeah, I think that was the Venice Commission’s recommendation: that if this kind of change is made, it should be a permanent.
[It’s] for anybody who gets the mandate from voters to have certain, of course limited, time to produce the changes in policy.
[As it is now there are] local elections in 2010—that means from 2009 you’re in election mode, then starting from 2012 you’re in one-year election mode until [presidential elections in] 2013.
It’s not for today’s political gain.

A lot of people are losing patience. How many people do you think will be outside parliament on November 2 for the scheduled mass opposition protest?
It would be very unserious for me to predict anything, but I would argue with that assumption you made. We have and we will have rallies all the time in this country, peaceful ones I hope.

The last rally, after the arrest of ex-minister Irakli Okruashvili, was a particularly big one.
Again, you’re going into numbers.

The day of that rally, you came out and warned of “harsh responses” if anyone violates the law. That’s an unusual step to take.
No no no, it was a concrete question, that’s again the problem of our media. There were concrete statements made previously by some marginal politicians who used the word “overthrow,” which has a very clear violent implication… The response [was] to their statements, not the demonstration.

Will you say the same thing on November 2?
If somebody will make statements calling for violent overthrow, of course we will, but it does not concern peaceful rallies.
I don’t expect [violence]. I hope, of course, it won’t happen in this case or any other case. Any violent disturbances aren’t good, but I wouldn’t overestimate the impact of it or over dramatize the situation. But when political leaders are using a violent message—that deserves a response.

Do you agree with [top ruling party MP] Davit Kirkitadze, who claimed the state survived a coup attempt?
Anybody who saw Mr. Davit Kirkitadze’s statement, with a caricature [of Georgian magnate Badri Patarkatsishvili] in his hand, shouldn’t have taken that statement too seriously.
Of course, there was a conspiracy. We all know the facts, that this plot to destabilize the political leadership and to have a very good “campaign” against President Saakashvili was coordinated between Mr. Patarkatsishvili and Okruashvili, and maybe others too. There’s nothing illegal there, it’s not a criminal act, but of course it deserves vilification because it’s a very dishonest, uncivil way of pushing politics.

A lot of people say the same thing about arresting Okruashvili.
I would argue whether it’s a lot or not, I haven’t seen any survey on that, a legitimate one.
If I may finish the last question, Mr. Patarkatsishvili has continued the things which he has done over and over again. Trying to find ways from the dark to push the situation towards a weaker government, not a legitimate one, one which has the stigma of corruption, stigma of instability—that’s the situation he feels the best in. That’s the situation he had in Russia.
Georgia’s is not Yeltsin’s Russia, Georgia is not Putin’s Russia. We won’t allow—the Georgian public won’t allow—the oligarchs to play with puppets and politics.

Is being better than Putin’s Russia a real accomplishment?
Of course not, but in a context when there are constant and groundless allegations that Georgia is moving towards Russia, or that Patarkatsishvili will be arrested, or that Imedi TV is under threat—which is complete nonsense—we have to respond to that.
I’m not saying Putin’s Russia is something we’re looking to as a measure of our democracy.
Mr. Okruashvili made shocking statements, groundless, with no evidence, illogical and now already proven to be false completely. Particularly with the statement of the US ambassador [who denied Okruashvili’s claim of passing intelligence to US agents]…and forgetting [even about] his recantation.
…The whole ballgame from Mr. Okruashvili and his surrounding, and I guess Mr. Patarkatsishvili, would be it would work as a blackmail that the government would be afraid and the Prosecutor General would be afraid to charge him because of his statements done the days before.
Then, of course, there were a lot of questions in the public because of the shocking statements.
Mr. Okruashvili approached the Prosecutor’s Office to say he was ready to cooperate, [and] not to be extremely transparent, or even over transparent, would appear a disaster, not to tell the public that Mr. Okruashvili wanted to [recant his allegations]. Now he’s out on bail and can say whatever he wants.

Many think the failure was in not going after him while he was in the government. Now, the president is creating an anti-corruption task force to examine the ministerial cabinet. Is there something for them to find?
Any government or political leadership who thinks that things are okay with corruption and it’s a done deal is either very corrupt themselves, or is lacking perspective.
…I must underline that if someone would look at the dynamics of the case and the sequence of events, the investigation started even when Mr. Okruashvili was a minister. The Chamber of Control […] started it when he was a minister, and then the Prosecutor’s Office started the investigation in spring.
It’s a pity that he actually managed to do the things which he’s charged with. And the reaction would be much better if law enforcement had been quicker.

It’s a failure that the reaction wasn’t quicker?
I think it is.
We have several other examples, tens of examples, of acting bureaucrats of very high rank including MPs, deputy ministers…police chiefs, judges, which have been prosecuted during their time in office. And most of the bureaucrats, not counting the judges and others, were part of the ruling political elite, completely politically loyal to this government. This case, of course it’s a failure.

This government has won a lot of praise for fighting corruption, but what about the UNOMIG Abkhaz clash progress report? Will that hurt Georgia internationally?
Well, I have to admit I haven’t seen the important details, I’ve seen bits and pieces of it.

It contradicts what the president told the UN General Assembly about the clash [near Upper Abkhazia, in which two former Russian officers were killed].
It’s not good. We are very critical of that report. It’s not my personal job to respond to that, but as far as I know there are substantial factual mistakes—intentional mistakes or unintentional, it doesn’t matter—in that report. This is not the first case unfortunately, and we’re going to respond to that very vigorously.
[The UN secretary-general’s previous report on the Abkhazia conflict zone] described the reasons of tension here, pointing at the summer [youth patriot] camp in Ganmukhuri. It was completely misrepresenting the situation here, completely. And I think it’s very cynical to consider the summer camp a major struggle in a conflict where more than 300 00 people were pushed away from their homes based on ethnic motives. And still in Gali, ethnic Georgians are forced to go into the Abkhaz army, to the army which killed their uncles and aunts, and they’re not able to use their language properly in schools. They’re under constant persecution, and then you talk about summer camps as the major problem.
I think it’s extremely cynical.

That’s politics. But this is forensics. In this progress report, they say the two men killed were shot at point-blank range. Does this worry you?
It worries me that this kind of misinformation is being spread. I think all the people who really want to investigate have absolute evidence about this group, which included a Russian colonel. And for some reason there is no reaction to that whatsoever, it was confirmed by Russian side that [their] military was there. What was he doing there?
…We have, as I remember, testimony of other Abkhaz, on the record, that [the two men killed] were just wounded when they got back. I don’t know what happened afterwards.
I have to remind you that [upper Kodori Gorge], after Georgia gained effective control there, was attacked twice already—both from the air and from the ground. Was anything investigated, was anything said about that? By the same institutions? No, unfortunately no, and that’s a pity.
The next time when some special force group including a Russian officer will come near and try to plot any violent action, there will be a response. Georgia is capable of that response, and we’ll do that response. It’s the natural reaction of any democratic state.

Will the next parliamentary elections be in April 2008, as the opposition parties are demanding?
Of course not. There are no grounds for that, neither legal nor political.

If you win another parliamentary majority in elections at the end of 2008, then, what will your top three priorities be?
Of course, reunifying the country will stay top priority.

The president has talked about a ‘countdown’ to taking back Abkhazia.
It’s not the first case. It’s a clear message both locally and internationally that the Georgian people will not accept these tactics of prolonging the situation, prolonging injustice, prolonging persecution, with the final aim of annexing those territories. That’s what we mean.

Are you worried about the repercussions of a decision on Kosovo?
Of course we are cautious about that. We are doing everything to avoid any bad scenario, but we are also at the same time preparing for the worst scenario… But I underline, we are doing everything internationally and in our bilateral relations to avoid [a worst-case scenario]. It’s not in our interest.

And your party’s second policy priority if reelected?
Internally, it would be the continuing of those reforms which are started and not finished. We have already brought initial results. But if you stop, it will be all gone immediately.
Next year we will have [a jury system] for a limited type of cases. Homicide with aggravating circumstances, probably. Then we have to enlarge that. And that’s a huge task, to bring the judiciary system in the shape that we want… Same with social welfare and the healthcare system. This is revolutionary reform we’ve started in healthcare.
But with the social reform we lost a lot of time. We should have started earlier. And despite the fact we have progress in reducing poverty significantly, and really paying back the debt to pensioners and targeting really the most vulnerable groups, this is not a comprehensive answer to the problem. This is an ad hoc, necessary step that we made, but now we must offer to our citizens [new plans.]

Do you have proposals on the table?
It’s in the pipeline.

And the third priority?
NATO integration.
Reunification, continuation of liberal reforms and NATO integration. Those are all interconnected.
I do think many people have been very critical, saying that the trouble with Georgian democracy is the government is too strong, the ruling party is too strong. Well I see that point, because one of the aspects of liberal democracy is to have a viable opposition that can realistically challenge the government. And that’s not the case right now.

Why?
They compete more with each other than with us, to survive in that pool of the ‘hate’ political vote. They have not been targeting the voters in general. They have no message, they have no consistent political vision. They have failed their own electorate in every single critical situation in the last three years.
When there was the [summer 2006] Kodori Gorge rebellion, which was a real threat to the country, because it was not fulfilled doesn’t mean it was not a threat… Instead of attacking the trouble, they attacked the government. Same was just a few months ago in the [August 6 missile incident], when the Labor Party said, and Ms. [Salome] Zourabichvili openly said what the Kremlin was saying, that Saakashvili would bomb his own people.
You don’t act like that when the country is under stress… Your first reaction is to stand firm in the face of danger.
Everybody who researches our electorate knows there’s up to 20–25 percent of harsh critics of the government. I’m not saying others are supporters, no, there’s the swing vote and our core support.
Our opponents, luckily for us—but in the long term unluckily for democratic culture—are only swimming in that hate vote. And you cannot succeed. You’ll be always marginal. You can be successful to a certain degree, but never to be a realistic challenge to the government.

The president, in his October 16 speech proposing the electoral reforms, pointedly declined to give advice to the opposition. What advice would you give to the opposition?
I’m not good enough to give advice



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