Current Events: Georgian Elections

I like current events, and I like to know what's happening internationally.  I do often question the utility of knowing what's happening internationally, but that's a subject for another time.  Anyway, some of the things that are happening in the world are kind of complicated, so I've decided to periodically write about them so as to help myself stay on top of things.  For someone who touts himself in the job market as someone who supposedly has expertise on Europe/Eastern Europe, I should hopefully know a little bit about what's going on over there and the world's larger issues.  I'll go for clarity and conciseness.

I'll start with Georgia's parliamentary elections.  Georgia the country, not the state.  Located in the Caucasus Mountains south of Russia and north of Turkey, Armenia, etc.

So what happened: elections were held to choose new members of Georgia's parliament, a body of legislators similar to the USA's Congress.  A coalition of political parties called Georgian Dream, led by a billionaire-dude named Bidzina Ivanishvili, won the majority of seats in parliament.  Eighty-three, to be exact.  The incumbent party, United National Movement (UNM), which has been in power for the last 11 years, lost 52 seats and the majority with it.  UNM's leader, Mikheil Saakashvili, is the country's current president and has admitted defeat in the parliamentary elections.

Why is this worth talking about?  Because Georgian Dream's Ivanishvili will now become the country's Prime Minister, which means that in a year when Saakashvili's presidential term is up, he will step down and there will be a legit transfer of power.  A ruling party will make way for an opposition party.  Now, to step in and clarify a few things: I said that Ivanishvili will be PM, and Saakashvili is the president.  Yes, those are two different offices, and currently Georgia is a presidential republic, rather than a parliamentary republic. But Saakashvili recently completed a new constitution that changes that.  The Prime Minister will be the head of government.  The new constitution goes into effect a year from now, so Ivanishvili will become top dog at that time.

While a successful transfer of power is not a big deal in the United States or in Western Europe, it is a huge for Georgia, because Georgia used to be part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics-- it was a Soviet Socialist Republic.  Historically, after the USSR broke apart in 1991, the old SSR's haven't done so well with the transition to democracy (except for the Baltic States, which deserve a hearty pat on the back).  Belarus smirks at the idea of democracy (authoritarian leader Aleksandr Lukashenka recently declared, "It's better to be a dictator than gay"), and Ukraine is struggling dangerously.  Russia is, well, Putinesque, and Central Asia (all of those -stans) also has little to offer on the liberal democratic front.  Georgia, however, could be another exception.

In 2003, Saakashvili (remember, the current president) and his pro-Western buddies had managed to carry out their "Rose Revolution" for the win and kicked out the incumbent-- a leftover from the Soviet era named Eduard Shevardnadze.  He had been a Soviet foreign affairs minister.  Since then, Saakashvili and UNM have ruled Georgia and carried out democratic reforms, albeit with little to no political opposition.  This lack of opposition made people in the liberal democratic world jittery-- Georgia could turn out like Russia, with Saakashvili no better than Putin.

However, last year Ivanishvili popped up out of nowhere and decided to take up politics.  He ran on a platform of "let's be better friends with Russia" and "Saakashvili is totally a dictator and let's get rid of him", which seemed to actually work pretty well.  Ivanishvili is a billionaire who made his money capitalizing off privatization after the fall of communism in the USSR, and really has no political background.  Despite this he threw together a coalition of whichever political parties weren't United National Movement and they beat UNM.

I'm not saying that Georgian Dream is what's right for Georgia.  It's actually hard to know what Georgian Dream is all about, because they themselves haven't been too clear on what they plan to do as Georgia's leaders.  But I'm proud of Mikheil Saakashvili for manning up enough to step down and let Ivanishvili's Georgian Dream step in.  He's stayed true to what his Rose Revolution was all about-- let the real winners rule, don't cheat, and put democracy above self-interest.

note: If you want sources, this stuff comes mostly from my brain, this week's edition of The Economist and Wikipedia.