Batumi

I’m taking a walk along the Batumi embankment with Adzharian Prime Minister Levan Varshalomidze. 

The prime minister points out and tells ”This is the building of the prosecutor’s office. We are selling it. And this used to be Abashidze’s residence. This entire street was the closed one. We are not selling it, as the Constitutional Court has moved here within the frames of decentralization program”. 

Six years ago I was in Adzharia to see a concert by Rostropovich. That time one Abshidze’s relative was the head of the local KGB, and another the head of the local interior ministry. The wife’s cousin was the chief of customs. Another kindred was the head of the petroleum storage depot. The Abashidze’s clan controlled everything, including the drug traffic. Even faithful servants were kidnapped when there was a suspicion they had not given up everything they were to.    

Then we also walked along the embankment, which led to a big dump that time. We were accompanied with the armed guards and the Abashidze’s portraits were hanging above us. Now the embankment has become three times as long and the advertising posts are seen instead of the portraits, promoting the free Wi-Fi working all along the embankment.       

But my strongest impression I got in Batumi: the village of Gonio at the border with Turkey. At Abashidze it was a borer zone, and it was even prohibited building up a terrace to a home. “We built secretly at night then” tells the owner of a local hotel “and we had to pay bribes”. A year ago this man took a credit in a bank and built up a hotel just in one year.

Now I’m standing by a music fountain, at the site of the former dump. “The flats cost seven thousand dollars here, now the price is seventy thousands” says the Adzharian prime minister. “We invested 5 million Euros into reconstruction of the dump, and we got the return right after the first plot sold for housing”.    

Oh yes, the opposition got 40% in Adzharia. “Why?” I asked the local businessman Zuri Beridze. “And you want that authority get 99% like it was at Abashidze?”  

Police

The police in Georgia do not take bribes. 80% of the current staff never worked in the enforcement bodies before, including the interior minister, omnipotent Vano Merabishvili. Official examination of cars has been eliminated being considered to be a tax imposed on the poor. The traffic police has been abolished too.  

Patrol police has substituted the traffic police. This one is omnipresent. It comes two minutes after any call. When your car gets broken down or you are out of gas, they will come and help you. Now the police is a kind of national attraction.   

Six years ago 20 cars were stolen in Tbilisi a day. Now my taxi driver leaves the ignition key in the car when he leaves it to buy mineral water. “We did it through eliminating the corruption” says Vano Merabishvili “as it is impossible to steal cars and reprint the engine numbers without assistance by the enforcement agencies”.  

22,000 people are imprisoned at the moment, compared to 3,000 that were prisoners at Shevardnadze. Almost all celebrated murders and kidnappings done at the previous regime have been solved. All the thieves are put behind bars. People go to jail for any crime: fight, drugs, buying the stolen mobile phone.   

“We have created a myth that we know everything. Let everyone think we bug on everyone” says the liberal Georgian “Beria” and smiles. 

Business

A big Moscow builder came to Georgia to make investments. He tells delightfully “I paid $ 12,000 for a project of building in the center of Tbilisi and I was able to confirm the project in four months. In Moscow same thing would cost me three million dollars and would take a year and a half.” 

If you think that this man - let’s call him Dato - is content with current Georgian authority, then you are mistaken. The matter is that six years ago he bought a hotel from the Zugdidi city mayor. The mayor just had misappropriated that building. At Saakashvili the mayor was placed on the wanting list, and a criminal case was started against Dato. The court acquitted Dato but anyway he was told that it would be better to return the hotel to the state. The relatives advised the same to him, saying Merabishvili would anyway get to him. So Dato gave up the hotel and now of course he laments about $200,000 lost.      

Another point is that Dato has an uncle. His uncle used to work in the Chamber of Accounts. When a new boss came there, he put the cameras everywhere and caught three inspectors in the act of bribery. Then he fired those three persons and the rest of 850 employees from the institution. Actually, that was done to the better, but of course, Dato pities his uncle. This is why in November he voted for the opposition.    

The State and traditions

There was no state in Georgia before the “revolution of roses”. Shevardnadze was instead of the state. He respected old good Georgian traditions like good treating one’s friends, intelligentsia and lords of the underworld. The Shevardnadze’s son-in-law possessed satellite communication. His cousin owned the oil business. The Supsinsky oil terminal was called “Shevardnadze’s filling station”.  

One cannot affirm that all the business in Georgia was possessed by the Shevardnadze’s family. For example, an insurance company “Aldaghi” belonged to just a “good man” David Gamkrelidze. This company was so mindful about people’s needs that it lobbied the bill about obligatory insurance of the vehicles. And when a person came to pass technical examination of his car he/she was told that for passing it it was necessary to get insured exactly at the above company.   

David Gamkrelidze sold his company long ago. He has passed to the parliament as a one of oppositional leaders.  

And he called me pidoras…

To tell the truth, I have a feeling that when Mikhail Saakshvili came to power, he did not know exactly what was to be done. He wanted something good for his people, but he did not know what it was about – war with Abkhazia or investments into the economy. And so the investment forum happened in Georgia after the revolution of roses and an odious liberal Kakha Bendukidze came there.  

After the report made by the prime minister about how the authority would be taking care about people, Saakashvili summoned Bendukidze and asked him “How do you find it?” “well, that’s not much to write home about.” “So what’s to be done?” “Selling everything, except conscience”. 

And they began to sell. 

The Intourist Hotel was the first thing to be put on tender. It was estimated to cost $3,000,000 and the authorities were afraid that the auction could fail. On the auction’s eve the prime minister Zhvania gathered everyone who had prepared it, and Badri Patarkazishvili came too.

“Batono Zurab” said Badri “it would be a shame to sell this building for three millions. Georgia is getting built up and everyone is looking at the government’s actions. And now it would turn out that instead of carrying out construction, the government is trying to exact money from businessmen.” The general meaning of his speech was that Badri was willing to take the hotel for nothing. Well, it was still sold for $3,000,000.  

The Poti port was sold to Arabs for $ 90,000,000. The residence of Shevardnadze in old Tbilisi went for 15 millions. Euraz Group wanted to buy a manganese mine with Zestafonsky plant producing ferroalloys and the power station. However following the request by the Kremlin it gave up that deal losing the advance of $20,000,000. The mine was bought by Ukrainian Privat for 113 million dollars. And the mines in Madneuli were bought by Industrial Investors of Sergei Generalov for 52 millions.   

The port in Batumi was bought by Yan Boden-Nilsen. Interestingly, this gentleman had been co-owner of the port before jointly with Garry Luchnasky and Aslan Abashidze. So the port was sold to the man who owned half of it already. The government stated that the privatization had been done unlawfully and such actions were to bring criminal liability.     

The talks about that were very difficult and once Kakha Bendukidze swore Boden-Nilsen. The latter submitted a written complaint to the President saying “And he called me pidoras, the meaning of which I didn’t know at that time” (“pidoras” means “pederast” in Russian).   

The port was sold for 90 millions. If Bin Laden proposed more, Kakha Bendukidze would sell it to him.  

Vake is our Vendee

Peter the First shaved off the beards and made his subjects to wear European dress. Mikhail Saakashvili began to dress Tbilisi in European manner. There cannot be a city where there is no state. By 2003 the beautiful Tbilisi had turned into a dump, it was a terrible hybrid of a soviet city and a bazaar, with street vendors, self-made iron garages and unlawful building sites.  

The vendors were enforced to sell inside the bazaars. The unlawful buildings were demolished. Most celebrated was the story of 16-floor housing building. According to the design, it was to be 7-storeyed. But it “grew” a bit in the process of building. And so it was decided to pull it down.      

“And what about respect for the property?” I asked the President.   

“And would they put up with such a thing in Champs Elysee? That’s not the question of property. That’s the question of illegality, where people think anything is allowed.”  

Anyway, the building was pulled down and the Imedi TV Company reportaged the event on the live air.

“Our economy has grown three times as much, while our budget has increased 11 times as much” says Saakashvili “So where did this difference come from? We took it away from someone. If a person took bribes being a member of admissions in an institute, he would stay discontent whatever salary I paid him. There was no political freedom in Georgia, but there was freedom of corruption. If your son was taken to prison for drugs, there was a phone number to solve this problem. Now such a number does not exist.”  

Intelligentsia in Georgia is not just intelligentsia. This is nobility. Ci-devants. Intelligentsia and authority hate one another like bourgeois and counts hated one another during Great French Revolution times. “This is our Vendee” said one of the President’s advisors about Vake, a district in Tbilisi.     

About opposition and police state

In November the opposition gathered a 100,000-crowd meeting. It appeared that the regime was going to collapse. And in May the opposition failed. After this failure the opposition called Georgia to be a police state. 

“There are no democratic institutions in the country” said to me Georgy Khaindrava, one of the oppositional leaders. “People are made to pass money to someone’s hands instead of passing it to the state”.  

“Could you give examples?” I asked.  

“This is your job to find examples. My task is to give general political assessment of the situation” punctuated Mr. Khaindrava.   

“Well, the police stopped taking bribes”.  

“That’s not to be credited to Saakashvili. That’s the merit of the entire Georgian society.”  

At the protest meeting I met an aunt of a young man surnamed Robakidze. He had been going in his car with friends. He was stopped by the police and there was a quarrel during which the police officer shot incidentally out of fear. Mr. Robakidze was killed. The police tried to plant a weapon to his corpse. But anyway, the police officer was jailed. And the relatives of the killed guy say he was killed not by the policeman. They say he was killed by the regime.    

“He is the bloodsucker” said a woman about Saakashvili. Her husband, professor of mathematics died recently from heart attack. “He is an ogre” says a man who was evicted from above mentioned 16-storeyd house. Then I get told about a fresh case: a guy was trying to get away from the police patrol and he took out a gun wishing to throw it away. The policeman shot and the guy was killed. 

An odd feeling comes over me at this moment. I live in the country where cops torture people just for fun and they get promoted even after knocking down a 5-year-old boy when driving a car. I know this policeman was sentenced. I also know he would be acquitted in the USA. I know that during Vano Merabishvili’s term of office the police killed 17 people but also 35 cops were killed. And I also know that no police officer would have been sentenced but for those spiritless, aged, hysterical ci-devants. When you don’t have crazy opposition, you come to have crazy authority.    

Badri, great and terrible

Badri Patarkazishvili was the richest Georgian businessman. Actually, he made his fortune in Russia, but when he was placed on the wanting list he left for Georgia and made a pal with Shevardnadze. It’s difficult to say what those two agreed about, but after “revolution of roses” Badri came to Saakashvili. 

“Revolution wasn’t in my plans” he said. 

Saakashvili didn’t like that.

Badri created the best Georgia TV station Imedi and from time to time he came to authorities with different suggestions. Once he wanted to get the railroads, once the position of the mayor of Tbilisi. Once he promised he would buy South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Badri hated the fact that people governing in Georgia did not accept his gifts, as within philosophy Badri was embodiment of if you don’t accept my presents that means you are my enemy.

There was a celebrated story about a man named Sandro Girgivliani.  

This man dropped into a restaurant once and saw his fiancée sitting together with Vano Merabishvili’s wife and some cops. All the participants of the conflict were rather drunk. “What are you doing here with these pederasts?” exclaimed Girgivliani in a fit of temper. They say Mrs. Merabishvili heard that and ordered her people to get on him.  

The hot-tempered Georgians pushed Sandro into a car, beat him, wounded with a knife and threw away. He fell down from a precipice and got frozen to death. The murderers passed the house of Badri and the cameras fixed their car. Imedi raised a hue and cry and the murderers were arrested and sentenced.   

A month before that court proceeding Badri came to Vano Merabishvili. He offered to become allies. In exchange for that he promised to cover the trial in a “right” way.   

“Badri, I’m very proud to be able to refuse it” said Merabishvili. 

Badri took his plane and left Georgia for a month.

“Why did you close Imedi down?” I asked Saakashvili. 

“Because the country was going to the dogs. They called to violence 24 hours a day.”  

“Such is the authority’s part. You must endure and be patient.”  

“I’m ready to endure anything. But when in a crowded theater someone cries “Fire!”, you know, the First Amendment does not stand it”.     

“Why didn’t you dismiss Merabishvili after the incident with Girgivliani?”   

“Because it was not Vano’s fault. This is Georgia. The man insulted the woman. And two other men who were MVD employees decided to punish him as men do. Badri made up a political thriller out of that. It was because Vano works effectively. Otherwise, no one would try to make him dismissed”.  

* * *

Irakli Okruashvili was Georgian defense minister. He created modern Georgian army. He was very popular and when his popularity became a threat for the president, it turned out suddenly that Okruashvili is a grafter. So he was dismissed.   

Okruashvili kept silence for long and then he made a statement on the Imedi’s air. He accused Saakashvili of high treason, of Zhvania’s murder and of ordering to assassinate Badri Patarkazishvili.  

Right after that a meeting was started by the opposition who required the President to resign. Okruashvili called to Akhalae, the head of Georgian penitentiary system and suggested: 

“You appoint me Prime Minister and tomorrow I will stop the meeting”.  

However, Saakashvili did not appoint him prime minister. He just waited till the meeting fizzled out and then he dispersed those most persistent with gas. After that he fixed the date for the early presidential elections. 

Firm Kodua

Any small country encircled with influential enemies either dies or grows the elite enforcement bodies: army and police. Israel, enclosed with Arabs, created Mossad. And Georgia has Vano Merabishvili.    

Vano got many victories for Georgia. He caught a Russian subversive who had exploded the police in Gori. The network created by him appears to have prevented intrusion by Russian paratroopers to the Upper Kodori after he submitted the evidence to OSCE proving the coming up aggression, which saved Georgia from the war.    

But most remarkable special operation by Merabishvili was that related to the tape of Kodua. That operation had started long before Badri decided to run for presidency at the 4 January’s elections.

As they say in MVD, a year before the events Targamadze (one of the TV hosts at Imedi, now he is one of the leaders of Christian-Democrats) invited Irakli Kodua, who was the chief of special operative department at Georgian interior ministry, to a restaurant and said that Badri liked his style and Imedi wanted to make a program about his good working. Kodua had a brother who had a business and his mother was running the customs terminal. Merabishvili began to press the mother and brother. Mother lost everything while brother had to leave for abroad. The rumors put it that Kodua had got in disgrace with the regime.     

After Badri ran for the presidency in January’s elections, the head of his campaigning staff Valery Gelbakhiani contacted Kodua. He told him his boss did not care what way the elections would go but he wanted Saakashvili to leave. Kodua was offered $100,000,000 for the coup.  

Kodua went to London to see Badri. Badri was very frank with him. He boasted that it was him to make Putin president and that in St Petersburg Putin protected his businesses and ever wore an old green suit. He told to Kodua that the oversea interests had given up Saakashvili. “You will bring two sacks with ballot papers before the cameras and you will say you’ve been ordered to implant them” said Patarkazishvili. “After that no international observers would be able to help them. You will become a hero of Georgia. Georgy (Targamadze) will start preparing the item about it tomorrow”.    

Then they discussed for a while who and how must be neutralized. At the end Badri said when all was over he would tell Kodua to kill three persons, but that wouldn’t be Kodua’s friends. Kodua recorded the conversation and it was published in Georgia the next day. Badri lost the elections and died a month later from broken heart. 

Georgian David and Russian Goliath

The opposition, that was so strong in November, lost in May for three reasons. First, Saakashvili came to right conclusions analyzing his own mistakes. Before, he demolished the illegal buildings, after November they began to be legalized.  

Second, business got afraid. “Usually business is afraid of the authority, and our business got afraid of opposition” said to me Koba Nakopia, the former director and co-owner of mines in Madneuli, who now became an MP, out of fear. 

Third, Badri was gone. Badri, great and terrible, was not only the purse but also the symbol of this opposition. He was the symbol of the outgoing old Georgia. The Georgia of thieves and intelligentsia, professors and talented film directors. This was the Georgia of ancient regime which is being destroyed ruthlessly by Saakashvili’s managers. 

The Georgia of Saakashvili follows the US, but not in the sense it is interpreted by our home paranoiacs. The US is not the host but the model for Georgia. The model of free and sovereign state. Saakashvili builds this Georgia hastily, as presidents must leave soon within the chosen by him model. And the wheel of history, as usual, treads on people and people as usual dislike to be trod on.  

Those trod on by the wheel, they cannot verbalize their complaints. They cannot propose return of grafters and corrupted road police. The only thing they can do is laying a guilt trip on Saakashvili.   

The most important dividing line that one may see in Georgia is that between people who know that two multiplied by two is four and they build their power on that basis, and people who imagine what profit they would get if they managed to cheat the nation saying that two by two is seventeen. This is the dividing line between the West and the Orient, between common sense and plot mentality.    

There is irresponsible authority and irresponsible opposition. Russia has the former, while Georgia was destined to have the latter. This is the fundamental reason for political disagreement between Putin and Saakashvili. 

Georgia is lucky to have Russia as enemy. Russia has become a threat leaving no choice – excel or die. The opposition became a domestic Russia for Georgia. The problem is that when opposition, even irresponsible one, does not get to the parliament the regime might come to say that two by two will give seventeen.