Greetings from Georgia -- Part 4 (unsent email from October 2006)

So this is an email update that I never actually sent out because it was in bits and pieces and I never got around to editing it-- I just fixed it up a bit so it might still be a bit clunky but here it is anyway...

Busy following the elections on the ground and the mass deportations of Georgians from Russia in the news, I’ve gotten fairly far behind in the recounting of my own adventures in Georgia. I think I left off last right before leaving for a weekend in Chargali with my Lithuanian friend Svirga. A friend of Svirga’s from Vilnius had put her in touch with a friend of hers from Georgia named Sergo, a film director, who called Svirga and insisted that she come up to the small mountain town of Chargali 2 hours north of Tbilisi for a folk festival celebrating the 145th anniversary of the death of a renowned Georgian poet. Up until this point I had been bemoaning this new experience of Georgia which seemed bleak and degraded in comparison to my vivid, absurd memories from 1999. Sure, sometimes the Industry Will Save Georgia party would break out a cake and a casket of fresh wine and insist on toasting to my future motherhood in the middle of a meeting that would then go on for two hours. And sometimes the district election chairman would force us to ride up into the mountains on a rusted Soviet funicular with her (Direct quote from my partner Sven to our interpreter Eka in said funicular: “Well, if we don’t make it, won’t it at least be a consolation to die with ‘Daddy’?”). But these for the most part were the exceptions to an otherwise dull life in Georgia which involved living and working in too close quarters with uninspiring people and the occasional drink with Svirga to complain about it all in the evenings.

And even though you would expect the bulk of my complaints to be directed at Sven and Eka and their “special relationship,” it was in fact our driver Shota who was driving me insane. I feel like I have met a million Shotas and still have not figured out the optimal strategy for dealing with them. Shota is the nice guy who is overly nice to you only because he wants to sleep with you but since you can’t prove this fact or act on it until he actually crosses some physical line of impropriety you are required to reciprocate niceness even though you think he’s a slimeball.  And he’s not a real slimeball he’s just a lonely, bored 38 year old man with visibly rotting front teeth and prematurely grey hair, who’s been married since he was 17, who chain smokes and drinks heavily, who drives a beat up car with a state of the art alarm system, who in his suffusion of pride thinks that he is very young and attractive. In the house in the evenings, he sits too close to you on the sofa and when you move he makes weird sighs and grunts that alert you to his physical presence, he’s always around when you’re coming out of the shower, he’s always offering you some form of alcohol. And he goes out of his way to “help” you, constantly tending to you, walking with you if you just want to walk to the shop to buy a bottle of water, acting as if you are some fragile princess that needs constant tending. But all of this doting gives him some feeling of entitlement as your protector and guardian, giving him the right to stand and stare suspiciously as you have conversations with other men. Somehow you are “his” even though you have never consented to this arrangement and unless you are willing to throw a huge fit that alienates him entirely there is very little you can do to stave off the day to day nuisances like his tilting of the rearview mirror so that he can stare at you in the back seat. And eventually this “nice” “helpful” guy becomes an oppressive presence in your life that you spend an inordinate amount of time attempting to dodge and avoid in subtle ways.

Thus, it is no surprise that Shota offered to drive Svirga and I to Chargali when we announced that we would be going on a weekend trip, claiming that it would allow him to spend time with his family in Tbilisi. Of course Shota was so motivated to go see his family that he took every detour off the main road imaginable to show us pretty views, significant monuments, as if the days activity was sightseeing with Shota rather than getting to Chargali.  It was however a lovely trip in many senses: a bright sky, cool breeze through the open windows and I’d managed to convince Shota to cede control of the stereo system so that rather than having to listen to the Beatles greatest hits on repeat as we did every day to the point of true Beatles madness, I hooked up my iPod and the tunes of the Russian Futurists and Postal Service were made all the more sublime by the scenery as we left the dreary landscape Kutaisi behind for thick forested mountains.

We were instructed by Sergo, the film director neither of us had ever met, that a white Niva (the Russian attempt at an SUV) would meet us at a certain LukOil station along the side of the highway at 14:00. However, as we approached the gas station there was no Niva to be found. Svirga called Sergo who said, “No, no. Sorry. Now you’re looking for a small Ford. It should be there shortly” We sat around the gas station for what seemed like an eternity with Shota refusing to leave us and trying to convince us that we should instead come with him to Tbilisi and stay with his family there. We sat awkwardly, fidgeting, nervous that our plans would not pan out and we would actually get stuck with Shota. And then suddenly, a speeding black hatchback zoomed into the parking lot and squealed to a stop in front of us. Two sassy twenty-something Georgian hipster girls in chunky jewelry, dark jeans and huge sunglasses jumped out of the car and without introducing themselves, put our bags in the trunk, packed us in the back and away we drove from Shota as he waved and ranted about us promising to call him like an overbearing parent. It was true liberation.

Svirga and I were perfectly glowing with our good fortune to be crammed in the back of this speeding car with stacks of stereo equipment and khatchapuri between us, an Air CD blasting at hyper-volume. In short bursts of conversation over the music we gleaned that the driver was Tamara, a petit 21 year old with a huge curly black mane tightly pulled back from her delicate face and sitting shotgun was Nadia a tall lanky 23 year old with a boy’s frame whose tank top kept effortlessly sliding off her slim shoulder as she changed the music. They chained smoked and while I had been complaining for weeks about Shota and Eka smoking in our shared house at gangster’s paradise, I couldn’t have cared less about my lungs in that moment because they were filled with freedom far more potent than air.

Immediately upon arrival the girls introduce us to Sergo who handed them a bottle of Jack Daniels for their efforts in hauling equipment and foreign nationals up into the mountains for him. He was dark haired with strong features and a solid build clad in a stylish trenchcoat. While he was in the midst of setting up the video equipment to film the next day’s festivities, he promised us a big supra (feast) of khingali and shashlik after he’d finished. Svirga and I followed the girls to a series of wooden benches set up in front of an enormous stage decorated with a blown up picture of a crazed looking man in a matted fur hat. This was Vazha-Pshavela, the famous Georgian poet who had been born in the town of Chargali, the girls explained. Sergo had been hired by his two surviving relatives to host a concert on the 145th anniversary of his birth or death, they were not quite sure which. Surrounded by soaring mountain peaks at varying heights in every direction, the sun on the brink of setting on this little mountain village, we sat on our benches and drank Jack and Coke from plastic cups the girls had procured quite pleased with our new circumstances.

The sky continued to darken and eventually the girls led Svirga and I out into the woods where tables were set up and dining areas cordoned off by tall wooden planks. They sat us at the “VIP table” where they said that the mysterious Sergo would soon be joining us for our promised feast and introduced me to Lela, the granddaughter of the poet, a serious looking woman in her mid to late 40s with a man’s haircut. “Leslie worked in the Parliament for Zhvania” they explained to her, “Lela was working there too when you were there.” And for a moment I panicked that the gig was up and everyone would realize that my days in Parliament had consisted primarily of strolling in at 10am writing emails to friends and taking impossibly long lunches while my boss was at the swimming pool or working on his application to graduates schools in the States, with the two of us writing the occasional speech in a collaborative panic in the middle of the night. Fortunately, she didn’t remember me not because of my deplorable work habits but because she had left the Parliament in 1998, the year before I arrived. We were also introduced to her husband, Dato, a funny, well-dressed beer-swilling man with a big smile who seemed far younger and of an opposite disposition to Lela.

We sat at our table drinking beer and eating khingali and slowly Sergo and his friends started to fill in the rest of the spaces. Sergo was the perfect host attempting to translate from the Georgian for us and telling us about the production company he owns. There was no electricity in the woods so the table was lit by people’s cell phones and despite the merriment it was a little eerie. I had ignored that feeling until suddenly a shot rang out in the woods behind us and a drunken guy with a gun stumbled over to our table. Now this was the Georgia I remember, I thought! And I smiled widely until it became clear that the drunk guy with the gun was also a VIP guest who would be sitting directly across the table from me. I spent the rest of the meal obsessed with the idea that the gun might go off in his pocket as he reached for another spear of shashlik, hitting me in the leg if I was lucky, but getting the gut in a worst case scenario in which I bled to death in the Georgian mountains. Luckily, despite the animated conversations and gestures throughout the table, no additional shots were fired and we all escaped intact.

We were corralled by Sergo and ushered into the white Niva that was originally meant to retrieve us which turned out to be driven by Lela’s husband Dato who repeatedly apologized for not driving two hours down from the mountain and back to get us. He was in infectious good spirits and Sergo leapt into the car informing us that we would be moving onto to yet another VIP supra. This one would be at the home of Chargali’s Hepsberi Gocha, a local leader he explained as being something like a cross between a village elder and mystic. The Hepsberi Gocha’s places was palatial and we were led up a winding flight of marble stairs to an outdoor deck on the second floor where VIP guests, singers and writers and newscasters some of whom even I could recognize from TV, were already seated around a long table overflowing with food and wine. Looking down across the balcony from our places at the table we could watch the tireless women knitting khingali and khatchapuri from freshly kneaded dough in the outdoor kitchen space below us. It was all very 18th century, the opulence of the estate, the grandeur of the table and the fact that the VIP guests around it were exclusively men with of course an exception made for Lela, who skillfully managed to break through the gender barrier but only at the price of a short cut hair cut and mannish clothing.

We feasted and the musicians sang and it was all lovely until yet again the same thuggish looking crazy guy with a gun entered and for some reason decided to fixate upon me and Svirga. He was convinced that we had a problem with him—that we were scared of him and no amount of smiling or choruses of “ara problema” would sate him. He pulled out his ID to show us that he was in fact a Kutaisi police officer, specifically from Bagdati a town in my area of responsibility. Perfect. And then he started coming on to Svirga. The very calm and stately Hepsberi Gocha recognized the problem from across the table and intervened to escort the drunken Kutaisi cop out of the party. When the policeman was unwilling to leave Lela’s husband Dato got involved and yanked the guy physically from the table. Other men joined Dato in dragging him down the stairs and from the driveway we could hear a cacophony of yelling in deep throaty Georgian tones that sound aggressive even when people aren’t on the brink of fighting. Dato returned to the table with blood streaming down his face and reported that the police man had cracked him one at the bridge of his nose. However, the next day this story was modified to his having run face first into a post on his way back up to the party.

The next morning I donned my trusty yellow Upper Merion Area High School basketball shorts courtesy of my brother circa age 15 and ran up into the mountains. It was so high up I that noticed my fingers starting to swell like they do on an airplane and looking around I could see the clouds first at eye level then as I climbed higher and higher I could look down on them as they floated along. It was a hard climb but a beautiful run and hearing dogs barking ahead, I armed myself with stones, proud that at the age of 29 there was really nothing I feared anymore. I knew how to handle myself, how to avoid ferocious animals by gesturing as if I were about to throw stones at them. However, when the dogs kept barking at me despite my stone throwing gestures in their direction and continued to block the path, I realized that I needed a different plan. Luckily, at that point I saw to my left a different path leading down the mountains that appeared to bisect the switchbacks I’d been run up. I trekked down and was halfway to the road before I realized that this path had taken me into the middle of someone’s field. And that someone, a young mountain farmer, was heading right for me with the dogs, who must have been his, at his heals. “Gamarjobat” I smiled widely and waved. He looked at me skeptically as if I was literally from another planet. “I was scared of the dogs so I came down this way,” I explained in Russian. He showed no comprehension and said something back to me in Georgian. “I’m just running. Ja sportmenka,” I said and couldn’t tell if it was my fistful of rocks or bright yellow running shorts that were confusing him. He tried to talk to me again in Georgian. And it was only at that point that it occurred to me that he spoke absolutely no Russian and that this was not a testament not his age but to the fact that I had really traveled so far into the wild countryside of Georgia that Russian wasn’t spoken. After a round of him asking me questions in Georgian, my replying in Russian and receiving only quizzical looks back, we had the only conversation I was capable of having in Georgian, but one that seems to work well in all circumstances: “Gamarjobat” (Hello) “Ara problema” (there is no problem) “didi madloba” (thank you very much) “nak vam dis” (see you later).  And with that, saved from the dogs, I galloped off down the hill picking up speed past a pack of pigs snuffling through the underbrush.

Arriving back at Lela’s house, where Svirga and I were staying, at breakneck speed down the cliffside I released two hands full of stones and nearly tripped over my own feet as I slowed to a halt in front of two teenage boys milling alongside the gate. They too looked at me with pure bewilderment. I smirked at them as I slipped through the gate shutting it loudly behind me and prancing up the path to the house. Svirga and I were staying in a little guest house in back of the main house and the only “bathroom” facilities were a dingy pungent outhouse and a spigot of running water coming out of the mountain. I had been dreaming about getting back to that spigot throughout my run and just as I was passing the main house to get to it, I heard shouts of “Gogo, Gogo” (Georgian for “girl girl”) from a window. I looked up and saw a kitchen full of men with one brandishing a big bottle of alcohol. “Gogo, Schapps” he beamed at me toothlessly and beckoned me into the house. He sat me down at the table and wrapping an arm around me toasted to women and to my future motherhood, wishing me a Georgian husband and six children in the next five years, i.e. the worst possible version of hell. However, as always, I declined to inform him that I had actually made the mistake of marrying a Georgian at age 22 and listing the reasons why I would never do that again. Instead, I just graciously downed my cha-cha (homemade vodka) with my khatchapuri and eventually disentangled myself from their eventful breakfast to shower and get myself ready for the day.

The sun was breaking through the clouds as we arrived at the stage heating up the day. I went to sit in one of the bleachers among the people already gathering for the show to remove my thick wool socks and stuff them in my bag but Svirga directed me instead to an empty section of chairs in the front row where we would have more space. We both sat down, stripped off a few layers and start chatting. And before we knew it, all the seats around and behind us had been filled and we were accidentally and uncomfortably taking up the two best front row seats in the house. As we were getting up to leave them, Sergo came by, patted us on the shoulders and said he was glad we’d gotten good seats. He then put on the official face of the Director and cleared all the people from the row of seats to my left. “Oh, we can move too” Svirga and I told him. “No, no, of course not. You are my guests” he said and we remained uncomfortably in our front row seats as the people who’d been forced to move glared at us. Sergo stood there beckoning at someone in the distance and out of nowhere a procession of long bearded, black robed priests materialized and culminated with the patriarch of Georgia himself sitting down in the seat next to ME. All of the cameras were suddenly on us and the Patriarch in all of his glory and gravitas stepped up to the stage to welcome the guests. He returned to his seat spilling over into my own as Svirga and I looked at each other in disbelief.

Lela got up to say a few words about her grandfather and then the stage filled with youths in colorful costumes, some with swords, others with big hats, girls with long braids. In the rock face of the cliff behind the stage hundreds more costumed children filed onto ledges and as the orchestra started up, they all started to sing and dance in complicated patterns to lively music across the stage. It was then that we realized that we were sitting at the heart of and by extension fully endorsing a Georgian nationalist event that was to be broadcast on all the state run channels in the run up to the election. Svirga and I shook our heads in amazement at each other. I breathed in deep and languished in the absurdity and deep satisfaction of the moment. There I was sitting with the Georgian national orchestra playing, a choir of 200 costumed children embedded in the rock singing, another 30 children in outlandish national costume dancing, pressed up against the robes of the patriarch of the country, watching the sun stream through the clouds that were hanging on the mountaintops all around us, staring into the huge face and eerie eyes of the poet being celebrated. This was exactly why I left the States I thought. Because in 29 years I had never felt this sense of liberation and exhilaration there and imagined that in living another set or two of 29 more I would not find it there. It was then I noticed that one of the sound guys walking back and forth along the stage was a clone of a certain ex-boyfriend I had lingering feelings for. My eyes drifted from the show and started following his movements. I watched him take a drag on his cigarette with an identical pucker of his identical lips to the ex-boyfriend with whom I would have been in love had I believed in love as a sustainable concept. This seemed like validation from the universe that I should keep living life boldly alone and stumble into absurdist adventures that make my heart swell rather than succumbing to some contrived version of “happily ever after” that might be sustainable but ultimately winds up stultifying. I leaned back in my seat and enjoyed the spectacle.

Eventually the show thundered to a conclusion. We looked for Dato who was meant to drive us home to Kutaisi in his white Niva but he was nowhere to be found. Instead we got back into the hatchback with the girls at which point we were informed we would be going to the after-party at a hall in the outskirts of Tbilisi. Not knowing what to expect, we got to the hall and found that three large buses had been used to transport people from the event to the after-party and these hundreds of bused in people were all there to take part in a giant supra of rare proportions. Once inside, I needed to go to the bathroom so Nadia was leading me through the crowds toward the back when someone grabbed me by the arm and started steering me in the opposite direction. It was Lela and she deposited me at the front of the hall, picking up a microphone to say “And we have another special guest tonight, Leslie from New York”—“To Leslie from New York!” 300 people raised their glasses to me and my completely dumbfounded face as I was then seated at the VIP table without ever making it to the bathroom.

I soon figured out that I had been selected for this ultimate VIP experience, not for anything special about me other than my American citizenship and English-speaking abilities as I was seated next to the real “guest of honor,” the American CFO of the mobile phone company that had sponsored the event in Chargali. Larry was exactly the kind of American I loved to hate, who took private Georgian lessons and had a Georgian wife and wore his wedding band Georgian style on his right ring finger, who was of course infinitely better than the American who lived in Georgia for years without learning to say thank you properly, and yet whose motives I still questioned as he went about living his posh expat lifestyle detached from the suffering of the country, always seated at the head of the VIP table and celebrated by everyone around him. However, before I could get about the business of disliking Larry, in yet another odd turn of events he turned out to be a fourth generation Lithuanian raised in Chicago at a time when it was fashionable to send kids to ethnic schools on the weekends so he spoke Lithuanian and was even more delighted to meet Svirga than me. It turned out to be an exceptionally fun dinner with all the classic toasts and lots of cha-cha consumed by all. As it was drawing to a close Larry asked us how we’d be getting home. When we gestured over to Dato, his eyes squinting, big smile plastered across his face and vodka in hand, Larry told us that under no circumstances should we drive at night on the unlit road to Kutaisi and offered up the spare bedroom of his house in Tbilisi. We tried to ascertain if he was just being American, i.e. ridiculously cautious and risk averse in matters of life and death, and negotiated with Sergo that we would drive first to Tbilisi, stop for some coffee and then Dato would take us to Kutaisi after he’d sobered up. This of course backfired when in Tbilisi we drank instead of coffee more vodka. So around 12:30am Sergo commissioned a taxi to take us back to Kutaisi.

Svirga and I piled into the cab cutting short our gushing ‘goodbyes’ and ‘thank you’s to Sergo. It was already almost 1am as we set of on the 3 hour ride back to Kutaisi so we were not thrilled when 5 miles down the highway the driver who had already expressed his distaste for us spoiled foreigners, informed us that he had not slept for 3 day and needed to stop for coffee. Georgia of course has no concept of a to-go cup so Svirga and I sat waiting in the car, trying to nap, as the little woman in the shop painstakingly prepared the driver his Turkish coffee and he sat and sipped it leisurely while noshing on some khatchapuri. While stopped, we had decided that I should sit in the front and Svirga in the back so that we would both have more space to stretch out. However, I realized that I did not get the better end of this deal as soon as the driver took off down the highway at warp speed. Now I’m used to and even a proponent of speeding somewhat excessively however this driver was going at a speed so fast it would have scared me in any car on any road with any driver let alone in a Russian manufactured car on an unlit Georgian road full of potholes and livestock with a driver who hadn’t slept for 3 days and didn’t like us. Even better, only after speeding down the road at this warp speed for 45 minutes did the driver realize that he was not actually on the road to Kutaisi. Dead-ending at a little village, the driver aggressively spun the car around and to make up for lost time sped at even more insane levels back down the wrong road to pick up the right one. Luckily my mile-trained eye couldn’t tell how fast we were actually going in kilometers per hour and I actually found that doing the math problems in my head to calculate from kilometers to miles per hour helped keep me calm.

The conversation with myself in my head and with the driver out loud went something like: “Ok so the Central park loop is 6 miles and 10 kilometers so that means that if we’re going—‘Oh shit watch out for the turn’—185 kilometers per—‘Cow, cow, cow in the road, sir’—hour, then 185 times 6, carry the 3 and the 4—‘lamppost, dear god, lamppost’ divided by 10, is is 111 miles/hour—Oh my god Gary was right we are actually going to die!!”  In the midst of this I got a beep on my phone and found a text message from Nadia saying: “Girls girls! How r u doing? I am very drunk. I met one person who said that ur taxi driver is maniac and he likes girls like u. girls don’t be fraid. I’m with you.” A few minutes later Sergo called to ask where we were along the road. Svirga asked the driver who said “We’re about 5 minutes from Zestaponi so about an hour from Kutaisi,” which she then relayed to Sergo. However, as Svirga was hanging up the phone I noticed us quickly passing by a sign for Kharagauli. This was part of my election area of responsibility and I knew the distances well. I disappointedly turned around to inform Svirga that Kharagauli was almost an hour from Zestaponi and while I took great delight in catching the driver in his lie, this did not outweigh the disappointment that it was 3am and we were still 2 hours from Kutaisi

Finally, around 4:30am our maniac driver reached the outskirts of Kutaisi and ignoring our desperation to get home and sleep at least for a few hours before work the next morning, he stopped to buy a phone card, leisurely scratched it off and typed in the code to refill the credit on his phone. We were also faced with the problem that since we were always being driven around by other people we did not exactly know where in Kutaisi we lived. Regrettably, the only solution to this problem was for me to call Shota and hand the phone over to him to explain how to get us each to our places. Shota was infuriated that we were in a car with (and paying) another driver and was curt with me and yelled at the driver but did manage to give him directions that got us to Svirga’s place. Once Svirga had gotten in the door I looked at the driver who had yet to put the key back in the emission. “Ok, let’s go” I said losing my patience. “But your husband told me—” I cut the driver off so violently I think I might have actually scared him screaming wildly “He is NOT my husband. Drive NOW!” “But I don’t know where you live, he wouldn’t tell me. He said he was coming to get you himself.” With empowered American female pride raging in me, I forced the driver to start the car and attempted to direct him to gangster’s paradise. However, in my deeply dependent state, I only got us lost and in the end had no choice but to call Shota back who then came to get me. My weekend of spectacular fun and freedom was clearly over.

Greetings from Georgia -- Part 3 (email from October 2006)

A good friend and interested party recently suggested that since Georgia is in the midst of a diplomatic crisis that's splashed across the headlines of the international press, maybe I might want to use my $100,000 SAIS degree to talk a little more about the political situation in the country rather than analyzing local dating habits in excruciating detail. With elections set for tomorrow and our E-Day planned already mapped out, I am happy to oblige (though I'm assuming most of you won't make it through to the end.. I promise the next update will return to less weighty topics).

First of all, let me say that on the ground in Kutaisi and the surrounding area of central Georgia, there is absolutely no evidence or even discussion of the diplomatic crisis with Russia. I have been getting my news from the same sources I would get at home—English and Russian-language newspapers online. What I do have access to here beyond the news is a close-up view of the domestic political landscape, which is very useful in putting this "crisis" in context. Of course I need to throw out the disclaimer that I'm talking as myself, as someone who has studied conflict and knows Georgia well, and not at all as a representative of the OSCE or its Limited Election Observation Mission to Georgia. The OSCE report will likely wind up saying something completely different than what I tell you now and that's not because the organization is biased or basing its conclusions on higher political goals, but because I am speaking as one person with a distinct perspective from a specific space in Georgia, while the OSCE report will have to synthesize my view with the different perspectives of the 25 other observers in 11 other locations across the country to draw its final conclusions.

(Domestic Context)

What I've been doing with my days for the past few weeks is going out to district capitals in the Imereti region (my area of responsibility in central Georgia) to interview election officials, representatives of political parties, initiative group candidates who are running without a party behind them, coordinators of local election-related NGOs and journalists from the local media about the upcoming municipal elections in Georgia that will be held tomorrow. These will be the first local government elections to be held since the Rose Revolution toppled Shevardnadze's semi-authoritarian regime and brought young, charismatic Columbia-educated Mikhail Saakashvili and his United National Movement (UNM) party to power. Since taking office Saakashvili has made questionable amendments to the Georgian Constitution that have in large part eliminated the checks on his executive power from the other branches of government and centralized power in the presidency. This makes these elections particularly important because they represent the first chance to decentralize power from Tbilisi, allowing citizens to identify their own local needs and actively steer their own development.

What I can say conclusively from everything I've observed on the ground is that Georgia right now is by all definitions a one-party state. Saakashvili's UNM dominates the political landscape, while the remaining opposition parties are small, weak, fragmented and disorganized and present no real competition to the UNM. One woman interviewed suggested that the feeling throughout the country is that there "should only be one party" and that members of the opposition are shunned. The question is whether Saakashvili and his party have achieved this dominance through authoritarian or democratic means. Is the opposition weak because there is such overwhelming support for Saakashvili and his party or is Saakashvili deliberately squelching the opposition before they have a chance to develop into real competition for him? It is a little of both I am afraid.

On the one hand, Saakashvili and his party are extremely popular and with good reason. People are thrilled to have for the first time since the Soviet era reliable electricity, well-paved roads, a disciplined police force, freshly painted buildings, new stadiums and even an amusement park in addition to an actual vision for the country's future. Saakashvili has made his goals explicitly clear: he wants to restore Georgia's territorial integrity (by reincorporating the breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia back into Georgia), join NATO and move toward EU membership. And he has made a lot of smart, responsible decisions that have led to significant, tangible improvements in the quality of life throughout the country. He has spent a lot of time in the west, knows exactly what he wants his country to look like and is taking real steps to make this vision a reality.

On the other hand, rather than simply campaigning on their achievements and ideas and riding the resultant wave of popular support, Saakashvili and his party are playing many of the old style political games to hold onto and consolidate their power. The first tell-tale sign of this was of course Saakashvili's amendments to the Constitution. I of all impatient goal-oriented people can definitely understand the appeal of centralizing decision making power so that things get done efficiently and effectively without the battle of compromise slowing down progress and watering down ideas. But the point of democracy, the cornerstone of the EU, is for the people to decide in which direction their country goes and how it gets there, not a single leader, no matter how clever or progressive he and his ideas may or may not be. It is fine for Saakashvili to put forward and implement a revolutionary agenda, but the people need to support it from among a range of options put forward by other clever candidates.

Unfortunately, it seems that Saakashvili in fear that his revolutionary agenda might not win in free competition, has been biasing the electoral playing field in favor of his party. To start, there was the announcement of the election date. For months Saakashvili and his government officials had been publicly announcing that local elections would be held in December 2006. Lulled by the certainty of press release after press release mentioning December elections, all international organizations and local opposition parties began making their plans (and procrastinations) accordingly. Then, over a public holiday in late August, Saakashvili posted a press release to the government website in the middle of the night saying that elections would actually be held on October 5 with the bare minimum of 40 days notice. The lack of subtlety in this move may be comically childish to us outsiders, but the impact of the unexpectedly short timeframe has had real impact on the opposition's ability to organize themselves, find funding and candidates and form coalitions, giving Saakashvili's UNM a distinct advantage from the outset.    

Saakashvili has also employed very questionable tactics in his campaign, intentionally blurring the line between party and government. The most flagrant example of this is his changing and use of the national flag. When I lived in Georgia the national flag was maroon. Four years later Saakashvili and his party campaigned as the United National Movement under the banner of a white flag with red crosses in the lead up to the Rose Revolution as well as in the parliamentary and presidential elections that followed thereafter. After winning by a landslide, Saakashvili changed the old maroon Georgian national flag to the UNM white flag with red crosses. This flag now flies in front of all municipal buildings alongside the EU flag (very wishful thinking, Misha). He has had all maroon flags throughout Georgia replaced with his white flag with red crosses, repainting parks and buildings to invoke the new symbol of Georgia. And the effect is creepy: everywhere you look you see the flag and think "National Movement" but then have to remind yourself that it is not completely inappropriate for the Chairman of an Election Commission to fly the National Movement flag because it is now the Georgian flag. Moreover, rather than changing the UNM party flag to something new and different, UNM is currently campaigning under the banner of the national white flag with red crosses and the EU flag paired together. These two flags are now used as the symbols of the UNM party and appear in front of all of their party offices and on all of their party posters and pamphlets. Of course, this is what flies in front of all government and municipal building as well. As a result, the white flag with red crosses paired with the EU flag is meant to represent at the same time the country, the country's future, the government and the UNM party as if they are all inseparable concepts. Again, the feeling that you get from this messaging is that there "should" be only one party—that another party would stop progress in its tracks and that no other government could work for the good of the country or lead it in the direction of Europe.

Another dirty campaign trick that further blurs this line has been the opening of UNM soup kitchens throughout the country to provide meals to the poor. If you ask someone on the street about the soup kitchens, they will say "Look how wonderful! This is what Saakashvili and his party do—they take care of those in need." They do not understand the provision of such services as the government's responsibility but as Saakashvili's charity. Rather than feeling entitled to government services from any administration that might come to power, they feel fortunate to have the benevolence of the UNM and Saakashvili. It is unclear whether the funding for the soup kitchens is coming from the state budget and being falsely attributed to the UNM party, which would be a flagrant misuse of administrative resources and against the law. However, if not, it is still clearly stated in the election law that a party is not allowed to provide anything of tangible benefit to the citizens during the campaign period, which makes the soup kitchens illegal even if they are funded with party money. A party is supposed to campaign and win on ideas and platforms. Yes, a ruling party can point to its past achievements, but these soup kitchens only serve to reinforce Saakashvili's blurring of party, government and state.

Finally, there comes the part that is highly contested and debatable. There are rumors throughout Georgia that Saakashvili has put the message out to his party that they must win every seat in the local government and that they should use every means at their disposal to do so, fair or unfair, legal or illegal. We have heard countless reports from the opposition about UNM party members pressuring opposition and independent candidates to withdraw from the elections. And in a large percentage of districts UNM candidates are running uncontested following the withdrawal of opposition candidates. The opposition describes a pattern in which the UNM party members, usually working in the current local administration, first offer the candidate a very nice job with a high salary in the next administration if he withdraws from the race. If the candidate does not take the bait, the UNM member will threaten to make sure that the candidate and all of the candidate's relatives who are currently working will be fired if he does not withdraw. Because such a high percentage of those employed are working for the administration directly or in state-funded facilities, this is a very credible threat. The opposition also claims that the UNM has threatened to shut down local businesses that fund the opposition or independent candidates. Meanwhile, we have also heard accusations that the UNM has threatened whole villages that if the UNM candidate does not win there, their village will never see any government resources as well as that the UNM has had heads of factories and schools tells their employees that they will lose their jobs and shopkeepers that they will lose their licenses if they do not vote UNM. The opposition is saying that the pressure on them now is far greater than it ever was under Shevardnadze.

However, these rumors are slippery and for the most part unsubstantiated. Saakashvili and the UNM have spread the counter-rumor throughout the country that the opposition is making these claims of pressure and intimidation solely to discredit the election results because they know that they will lose. The Industry Will Save Georgia party is backing up the UNM claims that everything is running smoothly and fairly in an atmosphere free of pressure. But then again the opposition is claiming that the Industry Will Save Georgia party is just a puppet party co-opted by Saakashvili and the UNM. People on the street are saying that you would have to be crazy to be a member of or vote for a party other than Saakashvili's because he is doing such great things for the country and they say so with fanatic enthusiasm. It is impossible to say for certain who is telling the truth.

Whatever the case, whether Saakashvili and the UNM are maintaining power through dodgy or democratic means, the end result will be the same in tomorrow's elections. The UNM will win the vast majority if not the full 100% of seats in the local governments consolidating Saakashvili's power even further throughout the country. This will allow him to plot out and implement any agenda that he dreams up, whether well-planned and healthy for the country or extremist and dangerous for the world. The only checks on Saakashvili's power as of tomorrow will come solely from the feedback of the international community in the form of support or scolding.

(International Impact)

Against this backdrop, the timing of the diplomatic incident with Russia begins to make some sense. The incident, in case you haven't heard, occurred last week when the Georgian government boldly and unexpectedly arrested four Russian military officials on accusations of espionage. Russia overreacted by cutting off all air, rail, sea, road and postal links with Georgia. The OSCE has since stepped in to defuse tensions by taking the prisoners from Georgian custody, holding their hands on the flight over the border and depositing them with the Russian authorities for their prompt release.

While many claim that relations between Russia and Georgia have deteriorated over the years, I would say that they have for the most part not changed at all since I left Tbilisi in 1999. That is, they remain as theatrical and childish as ever. Georgia still makes a habit of over-dramatizing the threat of a Russian plot to destabilize its government and reclaim control of its territory. They usually do so to drive up support for the current administration's latest policy or deflect attention from its latest failure. Meanwhile, Russia over-dramatizes the threat of a western conspiracy to co-opt Georgia and push a hegemonic US agenda on Russia from its borders. They make jabs at the Georgian government and economy like cutting off gas in the winter, banning the import of Georgian wine into Russia, or as of now suspending all travel rights and postal service between the countries just to remind the Georgians in whose backyard they are living and who has the power to tangibly impact their quality of everyday life. This of course feeds into the Georgian threat perception and the vicious cycle continues in a fairly comical way. A journalist friend here recently lamented that "it's like reporting on a fight between kindergarteners in the playground every week."

Thus, for those of us who have been reading about "deteriorations," "escalations" and "provocations" for years the latest "crisis" is not particularly interesting news. What IS interesting news, however, is that it has made the international headlines. Assuming that Saakashvili has read all of the same political sciences literature that I have, this fact gives me a great deal of pause in dismissing the incident outright, as I otherwise would. The incident was clearly an orchestrated move by Saakashvili to provoke the Russians into acting out against Georgia, but why now, why the media attention and what comes next?

First of all by way of an explanation, there is nothing like an outside threat six days before an election to mobilize voters in favor of the current government that has been successfully shielding them from said threat. Goading Russia into acting against Georgia on the eve of the elections is fully in line with Saakashvili's above-detailed desire to maximize his domestic power. But what exactly is it that Saakashvili wants to do with this unbridled power once he claims it tomorrow and how does a well-publicized threat from Russia forward that agenda?

Saakashvili has made his goals for Georgia explicitly clear. He wants to restore the territorial integrity of the country, join NATO and move toward EU membership. While many of you are likely scoffing at the ludicrously ambitious if not flat-out delusional idea of wild, backward Georgia becoming an EU member state, those of you who know Georgia realize that getting the territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia to return to the Georgian state is just as far-fetched a goal. Abkhazia and South Ossetia broke away from Georgia after the fall of the Soviet Union heralded the democratic election of a nasty ethnic nationalist regime in Georgia. They have been self-governing independent entities for nearly 15 years now with strong ties to Russia that include military support and zero interest in returning to the Georgian state.

Sound familiar? It might. Because structurally the situations in Abkhazia and South Ossetia are directly parallel to the situation in Kosovo. Kosovo was an autonomous province within the republic of Serbia within the greater conferderation of Yugoslavia. Abkhazia and South Ossetia were autonomous provinces within the republic of Georgia within the greater confederation of the Soviet Union. When the multi-state frameworks of Yugoslavia and the USSR broke down, Serbia and Georgia became independent states. Both elected ethnically nationalist governments which alienated their minority populations and Kosovo, Abkhazia and South Ossetia asserted their right to break away. Kosovo sought the help of the west in this effort while Abkhazia and South Ossetia sought the help of the Russians. This is overly simplified of course, but it is in essence the same game with the teams reversed.

And we know which outcome the US favors in the game between Kosovo and Serbia. It is widely known and well-documented (though still vehemently denied) that the US is pushing hard for Kosovo to be granted independence by the end of this year. For years Russia has protested this outcome siding with its Slavic Serbian brothers in fear that the precedent might be applied to Chechnya . However, with a co-opted Chechen regime stabilizing the situation in Chechnya, Russia has recently turned the tables on the US. They are now saying ok, fine, give Kosovo independence but this will set a clear precedent to be applied in Georgia, entitling Abkhazia and South Ossetia to independence. The US loves Georgia, a Christian nation willing to at least speak in the rhetoric of human rights and democracy on the doorstep of both Russia and the Middle East whose current president's Columbia law school education they so benevolently funded with a State Department fellowship. And they would hate to see Georgia concede its rightful territory to Russian influenced independence (as much as Russia hates to see Serbia concede its rightful territory to American influenced independence—and who said the Cold War was over?).

What this means is that the clock is ticking and time is running out for Saakashvili to reassert some semblance of control over Abkhazia and South Ossetia before Kosovo is granted independence by year's end. Many analysts have speculated that he may even be gunning to employ the newly US-trained Georgian military in starting a war to win back the territories by force. But even with new equipment and tactics, can the tiny little Georgian military really win against the huge nuclear-backed Russian forces?

No, definitely not. However, this did not stop the Kosovo Albanians and it may not stop the Georgians from trying. Not from trying to win mind you, but from trying to provoke disproportionate retaliation, win the hearts and minds of the western public and court international intervention into the conflict. In what could become the first example of Kuperman's moral hazard theory employed by one state against another, Georgia may intend to provoke Russia with enough little jabs of force until Russia gets so frustrated that it uses its proportionally greater force against the smaller state. Having already familiarized the western audience with the black-and-white struggle between Georgian good guys and Russian bad guys, Georgia can then point the finger at the big bad human rights violating Slavic menace across the international media and cry for US and/or international military assistance to come save them. Such assistance could include accelerated accession into NATO to protect Georgia from the threat of Russian reoccupation, if not military intervention into the conflicts of Abkhazia and South Ossetia by international rather than Russian peacekeeping forces. Provoking Russia could be Saakashvili's fast-track to achieving at least one if not two or even all three of his goals in one fell swoop. If he can get Russia or the Russian-backed Abkhaz or Ossetians to attack Georgia, he sets the stage for the US to intervene and then push their shared political agenda swiftly through the pipeline (so to speak).

Of course, maybe in consuming a daily diet of conspiracy theory here in Georgia I am simply manufacturing a fairly ludicrous one of my own. However, on the off chance that there is a grain of truth to my thinking, hopefully every party will be smarter in playing the moral hazard game this time around. In this case, Russia needs to be very careful not to play into Georgia's hand by overreacting to provocations with displays of force. As importantly, Russia needs to play the international media card with as much savvy as the Georgians, making sure that they get their views and their voice into all of the mainstream media outlets. They cannot allow themselves to get pegged as black against Georgia's white.

Meanwhile, the US government needs to get over its current conception of old alliances and start basing its international policy on shared principles and values rather than hunches and grudges, likes and dislikes. The US claims Georgia as an ally in the struggle of western democracy against Putin's authoritarian abuse of human rights. However, to do so they have to blindly ignore the uncanny resemblance that Saakashvili's Georgia bears to Putin's Russia. While Saakashvili may be claiming that his end goal is the democracy and human rights paradise of the EU, he is certainly staking out an authoritarian path to get there. The US cannot keep squandering the dying remains of its credibility by promoting hypocritical policies. The whole world sees what we're doing and it's not only embarrassing, it's dangerous. If Georgia is in fact our ally, we need to show it some tough love by demanding political reform.

Moreover, the EU needs to assert itself against the US more effectively and start calling the shots in its "neighborhood." Europe will have to live with the consequences of renewed wars in the Caucasus in the same way that it bore the brunt of the wars in the Balkans. Hopefully, everyone will be able to recognize the pointlessness of the Balkan wars that only served to complicate rather than clarify borders and positions at the cost of many innocent lives, as a fundamental lesson. Is it so hard to come up with an institutionalized solution to standardize and regulate how borders change and what happens to states and sub-states when multi-state frameworks collapse? Couldn't the terms and conditions be negotiated democratically hammered out by technocrats with full and fair participation at the international level in a way that all states agree to the rules and tons of future wars are obviated? Do politics always have to be such ad hoc cowboy nonsense or could we actually apply the principles that we claim to believe in to promote enduring peaceful relations and understanding among the human race?

Clearly, time for me to go to bed...

with love from Kutaisi,

Leslie