DEMOCRATIC BACKSLIDE? Georgian Democracy and EU Relations Years after Saakashvili

'P olitical crisis’ is the term that most journalists use to describe Georgia’s current political climate. But why is that? For a country that once heralded democracy in the post-Soviet region, Georgia seems to be suffering from a death by a thousand cuts. A recent survey by the National Democratic Initiative showed that fifty-one percent of Georgians do not think of their country as a democracy. Recent tensions in EU-US

relations only seem to highlight Georgia’s long backslide from its reforms in the 2000s.

This past July, Georgia’s ruling party, Georgian Dream pulled out of an EU-brokered deal that attempted to find a compromise between opposition groups and Georgian Dream after the much-contested election in October 2020. Georgian Dream won the parliamentary elections in October 2020 that were declared unfair and fraudulent by the opposition, leading many opposition parties to boycott parliament and hold protests. The country was thrust into a political paralysis. With the backing of the United States, European Council President Charles Michel negotiated a deal that would call for early parliamentary elections in 2022 if Georgian Dream was to get less than 43% in local elections in October. But, according to Irakli Kobakhidze, the leader of the Georgian Dream, more than half of the opposition had not joined the deal, including the United National Movement party which held power in the 2000s. Georgian Dream formally pulled out of the deal in the summer and Kobakhidze largely blamed the opposition leaders that had not joined the agreement earlier. Furthermore, in September, Georgia lost the second tranche of the EU loan package worth €75 million.

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“Georgia failed to sufficiently address the conditions for the macro-financial assistance, and, notably, to increase the independence, accountability and quality of the judicial system,” said Julien Crampes, EU Charge d’Affaires ad interim. The financial assistance was initially requested by Georgia due to the COVID-19 pandemic but failure to reform the judicial system caused it to lose the second part of what would have been €150 million. That, alongside a notable failure to protect those participating in Tbilisi’s Pride March from violence, further distances the Caucasian country away from a European rapprochement.

Following the decision to pull out of the Michel negotiated deal, the US Embassy in Tbilisi came out with quite a distressed statement addressed to Georgia’s politicians. “Washington is growing increasingly alarmed about repeated setbacks to Georgia's democratic future," it said. Salome Sadashvilli, Georgian MP and deputy chair of Lelo,

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claimed that the failure of the EU-brokered deal would “serve Moscow well”. According to him, it exposes the EU's inability to act as an important foreign actor in what Russia considers its backyard. “Appealing to the conservative values of Georgians as part of anti-Western propaganda has long been the strategy of Russia’s hybrid warfare in our country”. Notably, Georgia had a war with Russia over what it considered its enclaves, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. This drove the post-Soviet country out of Russia’s embrace and pushed it closer towards its Western neighbours.

But, despite its ambitions to join the European Union, Georgia’s relationship with the West is precarious and is only getting worse. But more disconcerting is its democratic erosion. Georgia has quite the unique history in comparison to its post-Soviet neighbors. A big part of the reason why is their charismatic former president, whose shadow still looms over the political landscape. In the words of Foreign Policy’s Ani Ckhikvadze:

“Saakashvili’s career covers one war, two countries, a number of romantic adventures, and

many political battles.”

When Saakashvili first joined the Georgian political scene in the early 2000s, it faced the same problem that many other post-communist states still struggle with till this day. Many of the political elites that were in power in the days of the USSR still held on to it after the country gained independence. Eduard Shevarnadze, former First Secretary of Georgian SSR and longest-serving post-independence president, was no exception to this. By the time he left office, Shevarnadze had ruled Georgia for more than 30 years in total. In comparison, Saakashvili looked young, promising and ambitious. US-educated at the Columbia Law School and already justice minister by the age of 33, a man endearingly called ‘Misha’ by the people was beginning to pose

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quite the challenge against the old guard. In 2001, he created the United National Movement (UNM) party in opposition to the Shevernadze-led bloc and in 2003, things finally came to a head with the Rose Revolution. In 2003, Shevernadze was accused of staging fraudulent elections — a cause that sent tens of thousands of Georgians to flood the streets of Tbilisi with roses in their hands as a symbol of opposition. It was a rose that Saakashvili held in his hand — shouting at Eduard Shevernadze to reign — when the protesters managed to storm the Parliament.

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The revolution was successful. Shevernadze was ousted and in 2004, Saakashvili rose to power with an overlwhelming 96% of the vote in the presidential elections.

What followed soon after was an intense period of reforms that transformed Georgia and put it on the map for many Western powers hoping to see democracy thrive in the former Soviet bloc. It is almost undeniable that Saakshvili’s first term as president was a success. His focus on tackling corruption led to many sweeping changes such as the removal of the entrenched elite, reforming the traffic police and eliminating bribery. One major symbol of Saakashvili’s reforms were the very visible and very new transparent police stations. In 2012, Georgia was the least corrupt country in the region, ranking 51 out 174 by Transparency International. His free-market reforms and reduction of red-tape also saw a more than threefold increase of per capita GDP.

This quickly made the then-Georgian President Washington’s ‘golden boy’. To them, Tbilisi represented a break from the ‘Soviet curse’ that placed the former Soviet republics into Russia’s jealous grasp. Bush liked Saakshvili, even if Merkel had her doubts. Then-Senators Hillary Clinton and John McCain even nominated Saakashvili for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. When it came to US aid per capita in 2007 and 2008, Tbilisi was number two right behind Israel. The US government saw real strategic significance in Georgia and considered it an ally, which showed a great deal of promise for the country’s future.

But, things are a lot more nuanced than they appear at first glance. Although it is true that Saakashvili successfully targeted corruption, this ignores the means by which he did this. The old traffic police force, which was considered deeply corrupt, was completely scrapped and replaced by the better paid Patrol Police force, creating a loss of nearly 16,000 jobs. Not to mention the earlier mentioned Russo-Georgian War of 2008 that saw two provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia splintered away from the Caucasus nation, completely severing the Russo-Georgian relationship. An investigation led by the EU concluded that Tbilisi of firing the first shots at the city of

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Tskhinvali, leading many to accuse him of rashness, despite the agreement that Russia was being outrightly provocative. Things at home weren’t looking so bright either. A crackdown of protests in 2007 eventually backfired on Saakashvili, who was forced to call early Parliamentary elections that he then won. A combination of all these factors saw his support go down to 53%, a jarring comparison to the 96% in 2004. In 2012, he was forced to step down and Georgian Dream, led by the charismatic billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili whose main promise seemed to be to get Saakashvili out of power, took over.

Eventually, fearing prosecution (and perhaps rightfully so), the now not-so-beloved Misha moved to the Ukraine. Ukraine was going through its own political crisis at the time, which proved to play to Saakashvili’s hand, who earned a reputation as a reformer of the region. Then-President Petro Poroshenko invited him to do work in Ukraine based on the ‘Georgian success’. He was granted Ukrainian citizenship and became governor of Odessa in 2015. But, Ukraine’s population, which is much larger than Georgia’s, and people proved to be a challenge to the former president.

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Saakashvili also did not shy away from public criticism and disputes with other Ukrainian politicians, which came to include Petro Poroshenko himself, who stripped Saakashvili of his citizenship in 2017. Saakashvili, who was also stripped of Georgian citizenship, was left stateless. It was only after President Volodimyr Zelenskyy came to power, in 2019, that Saakashvili’s Ukrainian citizenship was restored.

Nonetheless, on 1st October 2021, the prodigal ex-president chose to return to his homeland, where he faced politically-motivated in absentia charges of abuse of office from 2018. He claimed that he returned in order to support his party, UNM, ahead of local elections. “He knew that he would be arrested but decided to come anyway,” said Shota Utiashvili, senior fellow at the Georgia Foundation for Strategic and International Studies and a former official in Mr. Saakashvili’s government. Despite a wave of protests against Saakashvili’s imprisonment, current President Salome Zurabishvili vowed to ‘never’ pardon him — a statement she was willing to repeat. Most recently, Saakashvili agreed to end his 50-day hunger strike after authorities agreed to transfer him to a military hospital. Currently, Mikhail Saakashvili faces six years in prison.

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With Georgia failing at both a Western rapprochement and severing ties with Russia, which considers the Caucasus its traditional sphere of influence, where does this leave the country that once held so much promise? The problem with the country’s ruling party, Georgian Dream, seems to be that the platform that they ran on didn’t have much substance beyond ‘righting Saakashvili’s wrongs’. And while they continue to exacerbate the democratic backslide by politicizing the judicial system, it precedes them. Even during ‘Misha’s days’, civil society suffered, the election rules and the constitutions were changed to work to keep him in power and freedom of press was stifled. We were perhaps witnessing the makings of a ‘benign dictator’, one that used a set of unfamiliar tactics to rise and stay in power. But, the fate of this reformer, one who is rotting away in prison, could be said to parallel the fate of the revolutions that spread across the region in the 2000s. But I think that would be an unfair assessment. In the words of Caucasus expert and historian Thomas de Waal: “He's (Saakashvili) been a transformational figure for Georgia, and everyday life there is in many ways a lot better now than when he came to power.” It is important to remember that Georgia remains quite a young state as it and several other post-Soviet countries celebrate their 30 years of independence. Georgia is one of the few cases that managed to break out of Russia’s grasp, introduce sweeping reforms and bolster its economy. In a lot of ways, it continues to be a success story. The question remains whether or not it will return on that trajectory and if other foreign powers will help or hinder it in this process.