Some comments about Georgian opposition

There is a messy, unclear and controversial situation among the Georgian opposition. Currently, most of the energy and time of the different opposition parties is spent confronting each other land resorting to name calling as well as making various accusations of numerous schemes and so on. The unity which was and should be the slogan of all the opposition forces if they really want to achieve certain viable result is nowhere to be seen. There is unlikely to be any kind of unity on a countrywide scale achieved by the opposition in the short term.

The main division of the opposition concerns bids of the so called parliamentary opposition and non parliamentary one. The Parliamentary opposition is represented mostly by the people who entered the parliament after the 2008 spring elections and thereafter remained as members of the parliament. As it is known, the majority of those previously qualified as parliamentary membership opposition representatives gave up their membership from parliament as a sign of protest against the manipulations allegedly carried out by the ruling administration to secure there victory. But not all the opposition members did so. For instance, the Christian Democratic Movement agreed to stay as parliamentary members, created a faction and now it is the leading parliamentary minority headed by its chairman Giorgi Targamadze. This person needs special attention. He started his political career in his early 20s and was very successful. He was the chair of the representation of the Revival party which was known as Aslan Abashidze’s party. Later he resigned from political activities, quitting with Abashidze and became a very successful TV anchor in Imedi TV owned by late Georgian tycoon Badri Patarkatsishvili. Later he quit TV as well, established the Christian Democratic party, qualified for the parliament and here he is. From a political point of view he is a successful politician, always managing to be at the top, though not in the ruling power.

There are some minor political figures allegedly representing parties in the parliament as well. Such as: Paata Davitaia, Jondi Baghaturia, Gia Tortladze and some others. Most of them represent so called one man parties, as there are very few people behind them to consider them full range political parties.

Of course the opposition does not create the climate in the parliament but its presence still means something. Among the non parliamentary opposition there could be distinguished two directions, one radical and the other moderate. The moderate branch of the opposition is mostly represented by 8 parties and their major slogan is to remove the current authorities through elections. Irakli Alasania, Davit Usupashvili, Davit Gamkrelidze and others could be named as the leaders.Therefore, they are sitting with the ruling party representatives at the table of negotiations trying to amend the elections code to make the process more transparent, fair and impossible for manipulation.

There is also a radical element to the opposition, which says that the ruling power cannot be trusted, that it will never hold fair, just and transparent elections. On the contrary, it will pretend to be committed to fair play but at the last moment it will cheat and the elections will be held as usual under the control of ruling party supporters using different methods of interfering into the elections process by intimidation, bribery or different methods guaranteeing victory of the national movement again. Therefore, the radicals advise to use street rallies, public disobedience and other more acute measures for the purpose of removing the current administration.

Luckily for the country, neither of the opposition forces supports revolutionary moves. All of them claim that all the changes should be conducted in a legal and constitutional ways. This means that the political culture in the country is maturing and growing in the right direction. People have started to realise that any kind of revolution could be devastating for the country, and that is the vivid picture of the democratic development of Georgia.