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Pedro Gonçalves

Georgia election on a knife edge as two visions collide | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...vanishvili-mikheil-saakashvili

Georgia Bidzina Ivanishvili

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 01 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • The country is also at the heart of a strategic battle between Moscow and the west.
  • Two geopolitical visions, Atlanticist and neo-Soviet, collide in a landscape of ancient villages, medieval towers and breathtaking mountains.
  • Ivanishvili, whose $6.4bn (£4bn) fortune is put at half of Georgia's GDP
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • His rise has spooked the government. It has variously dismissed him as a Kremlin stooge, a political dilettante, a "weirdo", and an old-style paternalist. Government aides mock his zoo, kept at his village home in western Georgia. They also say his sprawling coalition includes unsavoury elements, such as xenophobes and fans of Stalin, who was born in the Georgian town of Gori. But, undoubtedly, Ivanishvili has plugged into a mood of popular discontent and fatigue with Saakashvili, who critics say has become increasingly dictatorial.
  • Saakashvili's own future is unclear. He is 44 and due to step down as president in January 2013. His government has enacted constitutional changes that will transform Georgia next year from a presidential to a parliamentary republic. This has fuelled speculation that Saakashvili is planning to "do a Putin", and perform a job swap that would see him hang on to executive power by becoming prime minister.His government colleagues, however, are sceptical of such a manoeuvre. "Politically it's impossible," said Giga Bokeria, secretary of Georgia's national security council.
  • Pedro Gonçalves on 01 Oct 12
     
    "The country is also at the heart of a strategic battle between Moscow and the west. "
Pedro Gonçalves

Georgia: expect storms ahead | Simon Tisdall | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...georgia-storms-ahead

Georgia Russia EU

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 03 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • For energy-poor western Europe, Georgia is a vital conduit for Caspian basin oil and gas exports that are not, for now at least, under Moscow's manipulative control. Vladimir Putin's Kremlin views Georgia very much as part of its backyard, a "near abroad" property (though the phrase is not much used these days) that should conform to Russian interests. Europe believes it belongs inside its post-Soviet, liberal pro-market "eastern neighbourhood".
  • The idea Georgia might one day join Nato – it already contributes through the Partnership for Peace scheme – and the EU is anathema to Russian nationalists. It is not coincidental that since 2008, when Putin sent his tanks deep into Georgian territory in support of independence for the breakaway satraps of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Russia has effectively controlled about one-fifth of Georgia's total land mass.
  • The problem for both sides of this strategic equation is that Georgia's leaders – they might better be termed overlords – tend not to do what they are told, even by putative friends. Saakashvili's authoritarian, sometimes confrontational style, pockmarked by serial rights abuses including a recent prison torture scandal, has embarrassed his Brussels backers. The west wants a stable Georgian government, not one engaged in a personalised, potentially dangerous feud with the Putin regime.Yet the man behind the Georgian Dream opposition, billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, could also prove an awkward customer, should he be confirmed as prime minister. Ivanishvili made his money, lots and lots of it, during Russia's corrupt oligarch era. He still reportedly holds a chunk of Gazprom shares. Saakashvili predictably labelled him a Kremlin stooge, a charge he denies.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • "Greek scholar Ilia Roubanis has called Georgian politics 'pluralistic feudalism', a competition between a patriarchal leader who enjoys uncontested rule over the country and a leader of the opposition bidding to unseat him and acquire the same [...]
  • Pedro Gonçalves on 03 Oct 12
     
    "For energy-poor western Europe, Georgia is a vital conduit for Caspian basin oil and gas exports that are not, for now at least, under Moscow's manipulative control. Vladimir Putin's Kremlin views Georgia very much as part of its backyard, a "near abroad" property (though the phrase is not much used these days) that should conform to Russian interests. Europe believes it belongs inside its post-Soviet, liberal pro-market "eastern neighbourhood"."
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