After-Election Georgian Reality

Posted in I think we have a thing to think :) on January 18th, 2008

In Georgia the weather outside is getting severly cold while the political temperature in the after-election society is hitting the top on the scale. Everywhere I happen to join a gathering, the number one topic is what we were striving for before the elections and what we are going to get out of it. One of my friends, being a neutral observer at the elections representing one of the many NGOs, is sharing with us some of the facts illustrating the rigged elections. And of course my friend is not the only person talking about the severe violations during the elections and count. But the international observers unanimously declare that the elections and its results are ligal and legitimate, though also emphasizing on several violations. As a result, the society is roughly devided into three parts: those, for who the main is what the international society thinks about the elections, those, who only “care about the democracy” and steress on the importance of the “vote of the Nation” and those, who are tired of the continous fight between the position and opposition and need a stable atmosphere though seeing all the misdeeds of the government. At this point the first question pops up in my mind: “Are the elections only to lure the international society and build the favorable image or to really show the public choice?” and “Why this two approaches stand so far from each other in after-election Georgian society?”…

The other thing that gives the reason for frustration is that Georgia is suffering the abscence of free Media, the integral component on the way of building the democracy. And this deficiency of free expression has become very noticable during the election camaign and after it. Before the closure of the Channel “Imedi” (georgian word for Hope) I used to switch on TV every evening on the mentioned channel after the tiring office hours and was trying to keep up with the reality of my country (we don’t argue that Georgians are too much politicized) and I had the sense that I was hearing the truth from quite good professionals of their work. After the closure of the channel, the two main channels remain, having the coverage over the majority of the counry : Rustavi 2 and The Public Channel, reportadly both under the influence of the current government. Who and whatever they are working for is not a question of discussions, but it is getting unbearable to listen to the same unrealistic claims and blames, count the unrealistic figures and bear all the aggression the journalists have to the opposition leaders…No matter how politically neutral you are, you can not keep finding yourself among those favoring the opposition as for the marginalized party (Georgians are naturally kind-hearted nation). The regular circulation of the fact that “no matter how fair the elections were, the results are approved by the international organizations”, works very much against our sacred wish of western integration and formulates the impression that we are less cared by the international society. And the result of the TV fights and agression, miscoverages and misinformation, is that most of the people like me, choose for not watching TV at all. After all, we have the feeling that we and our attitude is something less actual in the Georgian and big International reality…Ok, if this will serve us well, we can hush and turn a blind eye to everything, because we realize that “big things are worth of big sacrifice”…But what if we and our interests are just destined to be severly crushed under the heavy System of MisPrinciples and PseudoDemocracy?!……We have again a question: “Is it all what we were looking for when we were standing in the rain at the “Rose Revolution”?”……We are very much confused.