Evolutsia.Net

Remy Gwaramadze

A few days ago I watched the Ukrainian talk show Gotovi Vidpovidati (“Ready to Answer”) featuring president Mikheil Saakashvili answering questions from political scientists and random members of the audience. Of course I found it very interesting but it was nothing extraordinary. I did not even tweet the link so to not be perceived as Misha’s devotee since he was as smart an orator as always and even the tough questions were easily answered. So I added it to my YouTube favorites and expected to forget it as I do with tens of other clips. Plain coincidence didn’t let me do so.

Yesterday surfing the web I made quite a discovery. First I stumbled upon one interesting Ossetian blogger, then I browsed through his latest posts only to arrive to one where he wonders: “when am I going to wise up and stop to fiercely responding on idiotic posts regarding Caucasus, and getting involved in worthless discussions?”

I am sailing through the comments, significantly surprised and happy with lack of the so expected anti-Georgian vitriol. And than one totally out of context comment brought my attention. User koordinatorudpn writes:

Tomorrow I will be asking questions to Saakashvili.

Hold on, you what? Yes! The talk show. I hastily placed Alanec (that Ossetian blogger) in my RSS reader and driven by curiosity, went to the site of this ‘koordinator UDPNI’. Judging by the posts from that individual I quickly assumed that he’s an ordinary nationalist and not the smartest guy. As I later discovered, UDPNI stands for Ukrainskoye Dvizheniye Protiv Nelegalnoi Immigratsii (‘Ukrainian Movement Against Illegal Immigration’) and this ‘not the smartest’ guy is apparently a leader. I don’t want to even think who in the world is being coordinated…

So why do I so openly claim that he is – to put it gently – ‘not the smartest’? Simply being a hyper-nationalist is quite enough for me, but still, let’s have a closer look at the mind of the coordinator himself. How is their thinking process going (or, actually, lying in muck…)?

While browsing his website, I got to one particular post about his adventures on television. Lucky Russian speakers can check it out directly through video here. He asks:

According to our Minister of Interior, Y. Lutsenko, unfortunately it is the citizens of Georgia who conduct the highest number of crimes committed by foreigners. There are various proposals like from Yuriy Vitaliyovych [Lutsenko]‘s, The Party of Regions and other organisations to introduce visa regime in order to cut off the flow of criminals from your country. Let your businessmans coming to us, like David Zhvania, but we don’t need your thieves in law, and all the others. How would you refer to this initiative, visa regime with Georgia?

In the blog post – clearly aimed to his supporters – he lowers himself to cheap, sarcastic writing:

His [Saakashvili's] answer was simply phenomenal: “It’s obsolete.. everyone, who we were able to export, they’re already with you!”

Misha indeed started answering with these pawky words, and one don’t need to get his sense of humor to understand his meaning. And the audience greeted this prelude with a smile. Sure, the whole statement doesn’t seem like a fit for the poor nationalistic “audience” of the blog. Like they’d ever change? Saakashvili says to ‘koordinator UDPNI‘:

Georgia was Palermo in global scale. We, in our own misery, were a hub of organized crime, and at the time when I became President, Georgia was virtually managed by thieves in law. In the last 5 years in Georgia, I want to say that we fired every policeman because they were a part of that criminal network. 5% of Georgians trusted police than, now it’s more than 80% – the police are simply loved. How did we achieve such effects? It was achieved, first of all, theirs salaries are super solid, starting with 500 dollars up to 4,5 or 6 thousand; they have nice [police] cars, nice uniforms and the most important, they respect society. We have no GAI, you won’t see a policeman on a street, they show up rarely but very fast, I assure you. And they spit on who you are, a minister or whoever! Especially us, yesterday they stopped my assistant, presidential assistant, and took the car and fined a serious sum. (…) What am I trying to say? We have a group in the Ministry of Interior which works with Lutsenko, I know him very well and we are working. We are ready to provide any information as well as we are providing it to Spaniards and others… once upon a time I told to Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin: “what do you need our thieves in law for?”. Unlike Ukrainian, they [Russian thieves in law of Georgian descent] were traveling with FSB security, with the sirens, [they were] giving interviews on TV… they are bandits, not the politicians. He [Vladimir Putin] smiled kindly and said “Russia is free country, everyone can come”. Eventually, we got rid of them. If you want to export them back to us, our prisons cry for them, we don’t need to catch one red-handed, it’s enough to prove he is thief in law.

I’m sure that ‘koordinator‘ is smart enough to assume that the Georgian government is not loading criminals on ships and literally exporting them to Ukraine. But the question raised by ‘koordinator‘ is so wrong and backward, even leaving nationalistic aspects aside. He seeks the cure for symptoms while ignoring the root of the phenomenon; blindly desiring to hastily deal with fever but not the entrenched virus. In grappling with Ukraine’s enormous problems, the best he can come with is… visa regime?

Well, ‘koordinator‘ is a lot like no one in Ukraine, but Yuriy Lutsenko is the acting Minister of the Interior. So the visa regime issue is being considered by a man who has been responsible for fighting corruption and crime since the very beginning of the Orange era. The reason why criminals started to leave Georgia is crystal clear: because it’s harder to commit crime there. Analogically, why are they coming to Ukraine? Because there’s no visa regime? Are you kidding me? How in a country where its Colored Revolution was simply wasted, leaving Ukraine as dire as it was during Kuchma with corruption on exactly the same miserable level as Russia’s, is Mr. Lutsenko going to execute the task of his new visa regime? Mission impossible in a country where bureaucracy is a sort of marketplace. Instead of destroying this marketplace with criminals coming and buying what is needed for crime, this visa regime thing would be only helping to fill enough shelves… and after elections it is likely to do so.

So why our sister revolutionary Ukraine, unlike Georgia, is on the path of failure in its attempt for Europeanisation? One can’t expect results when country is ruled by ‘koordinators’…

I wanted to share a few words about UDPNI but there is no need to reinvent the wheel, since there is a great analysis here: a magnificent blog entry about Ukraine’s “imported nationalism.” Keep surfing, you never know what is to discover on the net!