Georgia: Are Opposition Appeals Lost in Translation?

As diplomats press for opposition-government dialogue in Georgia, former parliamentary chairperson Nino Burjanadze, the leader of the opposition party Democratic Movement-United Georgia, appealed to ordinary Georgians "who speak foreign languages" to help the opposition make its case for the removal of President Mikheil Saakashvili. The results were decidedly mixed.

Heeding the call, a small crowd of opposition supporters gathered in front of downtown Tbilisi's Rustaveli Theatre on the afternoon of May 14 to share their stories in English or German with a handful of diplomats and foreign journalists. In many cases, the assertions made by the citizen-linguists proved hyperbolic, and perhaps served to undermine the credibility of the opposition movement.

"Police is ruling everything and kill everyone," one silver-haired man explained to a US diplomat who was listening patiently. "They [police] wait, they see a lonely man and then they shoot him. Maybe kill. Maybe not."

One elderly woman complained to attentive diplomats that she had been dismissed from the university where she had taught for 30 years. "I am a professor, an engineer. I am a good specialist, but Saakashvili tells me 'You are not clever,'" she said in English. "But I am very clever, I know I am clever."

Sometimes clutching handwritten appeals, participants appeared to have come on their own initiative. Some confessed to being doubtful that their efforts would sway opinions.

"I don't think they care what happens to us," the former university professor, speaking in her native Georgian, told a EurasiaNet correspondent, referring to the diplomats in the crowd. "They nod their heads and sigh, but all they care about is to get their oil from the pipeline and drag us into NATO."