Georgia’s hopes to join NATO, reclaim Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and
other running foreign policy matters were the key moments of US
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s June 4-5 drop-in on Georgia,
but her visit had implications for domestic political struggles as
well.
With Georgia's parliamentary elections set for October, all of the
country’s main political players hope for some public display of
Washington’s support. Before Clinton swung by, opposition tycoon Bidzina Ivanishvili had hoped to steal her away a bit from the warm embrace of her host (and his arch-rival) Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili for an intimate tête-à-tête. But it was not to be.
Clinton chose to get the lowdown on Georgian politics from a less up-close-and-personal sit-down with NGOs and a group meeting with opposition leaders. Ivanishvili was represented at the meeting by allies in his Georgian Dream coalition and the chairperson of the group, Manana Kobakhidze.
He had earlier indicated that he does not want to share his Clinton time with leaders of political minority groups who are not part of the Georgian Dream and whom he describes as a "fake opposition."
But looks like Ivanishvili's envoy, Kobakhidze, did not exactly fade into the woodwork. She claimed that Clinton inquired why Ivanishvili refuses to make use of the government offer -- now sealed in the constitution as an amendment -- which would allow the billionaire to run in the parliamentary election as, yes, a European Union citizen.
Kobakhidze said she repeated Ivanishvili's objection to custom-fitting the constitution for one man.
But if Ivanishvili and Co. were worried that Clinton’s enthusiastic government hosts may charm her away from focusing on the opposition's election-campaign concerns, her comments today must have sounded reassuring.
In a diplomatic yet no-nonsense tone, Clinton complimented the Saakashvili government for democratic progress in the past years, but said that it is time to “consolidate” the “democratic gains.”
“It will bring Georgia closer to achieving your Euro-Atlantic aspirations,” she said. And the test for it is going to be 2012's parliamentary election (expected to be a fight between team Saakashvili and team Ivanishvili) and presidential vote.
Davit Usupashvili, leader of the Republican Party, a Dream Coalition member, claimed that Clinton noted that she was well informed about the “uncompetitive” political environment in Georgia.
Predictably, Clinton maintained a diplomatic distance from Georgia’s internal political strife and kept her comments on the general side. Perhaps neither her praises nor her criticisms were as keen as either Saakashvili or Ivanishvili, respectively, hoped. But Georgia's powers that be or that want to be will no doubt milk them for all that they're worth.
Giorgi Lomsadze is a journalist based in Tbilisi, and author of Tamada Tales.
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