The promise of democracy

By Irakli Alasania

Irakli Alasania is the leader of the opposition group in Georgia, Alliance for Georgia, and a former Ambassador to the United Nations. After a recent visit to London, here he guest posts on LabourList about the need for improved democracy in his home country.

Six years ago today, in the Rose Revolution, the people of Georgia peacefully removed a government after it presided over massive electoral fraud. Today we don’t want another revolution but we still need to build a mature democracy.

I don’t for an instant regret supporting the Rose Revolution: I am running for mayor of Tbilisi because I want to see its ideals fulfilled. But I do regret the way so many of the revolutionaries, from President Saakashvili down, have let us down by not strengthening democracy and freedom of speech.

Building a deep democratic culture in Georgia is essential to addressing the issues that affect people’s day to day lives – the lack of healthcare for our citizens, the dramatic increase in unemployment and the need to urgently rebuild our schools. Fixing our political system is part of fixing our country.

President Saakashvili’s economic reforms in the early years were rightly praised, but now even that progress is under threat. The president is introducing a constitutional straightjacket for public spending that will deprive government of the flexibility it will need to face economic turbulence or to invest in health or education. It also proposes massive additional spending cuts to social programmes that are already far from profligate.

Foreign investment is down by 80% and the second largest British investor in our country has warned that our economy is being damaged by “criminals”. It is perhaps no wonder that a 5.5% fall in economic output is predicted for 2009, and, although the true figure is probably much higher, unemployment remains at 17%. A third of our population – more than 5 million people live on less than 2 dollars a day.

Georgia does not have the natural resources to be a big commodity exporter and it is by adding value that we will get the jobs and investment needs to escape poverty and unemployment. But without better schools, modern universities and new skills we just will not be able to compete. Starving the education system in the hope of attracting foreign investment misses the point of why investors would pick Georgia in the first place.

That such potentially disastrous policies can be shoved through without much debate is a product of the thinning of Georgian democracy. Sadly for the President he is, even now, finding it hard to realise that he cannot go on with ever greater centralisation of power in his hands and that the people of Georgia need to be given a greater say over their country’s future.

The President seems to think the best place to start is with renewed mandates for local government. But even though he has announced early local elections, he still seems unable to decide if he will let those elections be held on a free and fair basis. There are even signs that he is willing to open the system up but is being increasingly hemmed in by hardliners in his own party who cannot contemplate the idea that democratic power has to be shared.

President Saakashvili knows just how important local government can be. His powerbase before the Rose Revolution was as chairman of the Tbilisi city council. He now promises a direct election for that mayoralty and for mayors of another four of Georgia’s biggest cities, but his ruling party seem to want to keep the existing system.

The reasons for their resistance to change aren’t difficult to find. Last time we elected a city council in Tbilisi, in 2006, the electoral system gave the president’s party over 90% of the seats for just under two-thirds of the vote. Since then the president’s party has lost significant support in the capital but if we keep the same system, unfair elections are guaranteed.

My challenge to President Saakashvili is that he shows himself as a real leader and demonstrates to the world that he understands the true meaning of democracy – a readiness to lose elections as well as win them.

Earlier this year we demanded early presidential and parliamentary elections. During the rallies opposition activists were beaten and tortured, had their property seized and relatives thrown in jail as political hostages on trumped up charges. My party and its allies have suffered a lot as well, but we managed to overcome psychological barriers and engage in the political process.

The President should recognise that after all this, it is remarkable that the opposition is prepared to discuss repairing our political system, improving the electoral environment and, if major issues about the election are agreed, expresses its readiness to participate in the promised upcoming local and direct mayoral elections.

But the moment will not last forever. And here I would refer to the US Vice-President, Mr. Biden. Speaking to our Parliament in July, he said that the democratic ideals of the Rose Revolution could only be realised when “government is transparent, accountable and fully participatory”.

President Saakashvili can be the man who ends Georgia’s cycle of revolutionary discontent and broken governments by delivering on the simple promises he has made to us, the Georgian people, and to our international partners.

A blustering autocrat with a reckless love of political gambling or the man who made good, eventually, on his promises of democracy: the choice is his to make.