Evolutsia.Net

Michael Cecire
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

During President Saakashvili’s September 25th speech to the United Nations, he took the step in making the shocking declaration that the Georgian government was “committed to the direct election of all mayors in few months time.” I initially interpreted this to mean every direct election, but with a reader’s help, I found that the implication actually concerned the country’s five largest cities – Tbilisi, Kutaisi, Batumi, Poti, and Rustavi.

As I noted on my follow-up analysis, the cavalier President had apparently deviated from the speech that the Foreign Ministry had posted on its website, lending to the idea that the announcement was an on-the-spot improvisation, likely conjured by the thrill of the moment. Although there was never any subsequent confirmation or denial that this was the case, the response from other members of the ruling party was not so enthusiastic as Misha’s UN exhortation. Understandably, the opposition was skeptical of the announcement.

They were right to be skeptical.

Today, I learned from RFE/RL’s fantastic Caucasus Report that the ruling party has more or less scuttled its plans to extend direct elections to all of Georgia’s largest cities and has not budged on the winner-take-all system it proposes for the Tbilisi mayoral elections, a format that uniquely favors the ruling party – which has the advantages of incumbency, money, organization, and state apparatuses to propel it to victory over a largely fractured opposition. Although many modern democracies utilize the winner-take-all system for certain offices, they are almost always accompanied by a certain modicum of independence by the electoral commissions and more fully-developed political movements.

But the Tbilisi elections aren’t really the point here. The point is that Saakashvili stood before the world and announced that Georgia’s largest cities would be directly electing their leaders soon. This means that Saakashvili effectively lied to the global body. Whether or not the President knew that his words would  not be carried though, I cannot say, but there does not seem to be any great wealth of evidence that the ruling party actually made a great attempt to turn Saakashvili’s announcement into policy.

Saakashvili will lose face with the new American Ambassador, John Bass, the West, and the global community unless he publicly explains why he is not following through with his promise. Georgia is at a critical point; with Russia bombast on full display and the West’s soft distancing from Tbilisi, Georgia should preserve whatever goodwill it has left in the West. I had private conversations with a few former U.S. Ambassadors to Eastern European countries recently, and there seems to be a growing consensus in the American diplomatic community that democracy’s retreat in the region is a serious concern and might help explain some of the Obama administration’s gradual disengagement.

In short, it’s long past time for the government to match its grandiose rhetoric with real action.