With almost every day bringing a new recording about ex-Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and friends’ alleged plans to thwart any takeover of government-bashing broadcaster Rustavi2, online parodies of the conversations have become the thing in Georgia, even as public concerns about violations of privacy are growing.
Borrowing the graphics used in the original online leaks, the send-ups replace the ex-president and his allies with various entertaining exchanges between real and fictional characters.
“Keto, I am going to come over tomorrow at dusk. Let’s try, perhaps it can work out between us,” a man called Khirkhal tells his small-town paramour in a clip ripped from the 1980 Georgian musical comedy, “Everyone Wants Love.” “Come, come through the breach in the fence, but don’t let anyone see you,” Keto whispers passionately.
While the online satires and opinion polls indicate public fatigue with Georgia’s main political forces and their ways, the original leaks paint a far less entertaining picture. “Blood will be spilt there… a hundred percent,” Saakashvili supposedly predicted in reference to the standoff around Rustavi2, a channel long sympathetic to the former president’s political base in Georgia, the United National Movement Party.
Saakashvili, now governor of Ukraine’s Odessa region, added that he is as certain of such a turn of events as the fact that he is not coriander. This herbal metaphor makes only slightly more sense in colloquial Georgian, in which it can also carry crude connotations depending on usage.
But, in any case, the turn of phrase does not appear to be helping either Misha, as he is known, or the current Georgian leader, Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili, cut a particularly dignified figure.
“We will not comment upon the statements of the coriander,” Gharibashvili said on November 3 of Saakashvili. Based on the online recordings, the premier has accused the ex-president of plotting an uprising in Georgia. He has hastened to assure Georgians that as long as Gharibashvili and his ruling Georgian Dream coalition are in charge, nobody, “coriander included, can be above the law.”
Even after a court in Tbilisi on November 3 handed the station over to an earlier owner, the supposed leaks have continued.
In a recording posted a day after the verdict, Data Akhalaia, a Saakashvili-era interior-ministry intelligence boss, discusses plans with Roman Sajaia, a lawyer for his brother, jailed ex-Defense and Interior Minister Bacho Akhalaia, to send fighters to Rustavi2 to rebuff any police attempt to storm the channel. (Akhalaia, sought by the Georgian government on criminal charges, is now a political refugee in Greece. )
In a conversation posted by the same site on November 3, Saakashvili allegedly expounds on similar plans with UNM lawmaker Nugzar Tsiklauri, who said that a couple of thousand people would show up to defend the station, including 50 special forces from the western region of Samegrelo.
Some of Saakashvili’s interlocutors, including Tsiklauri, have admitted the conversations occurred. Some claimed the audios were carefully spliced and diced to achieve the desired effect. UNM members featured have argued that they never made a secret of doing everything possible to prevent the government from handing Rustavi2 over to a more congenial owner.
Based on these supposed tête-à-têtes, a coup-investigation is underway.
Energy Minister Kakha Kaladze said on November 5 that no coriander, whether as individuals or a party, will be allowed to stage a revolt in the country.
No coup conspiracy would be spicy enough without a femme fatale, however. Operetta star Sofia Nizharadze was also summoned for questioning after another recording with Saakashvili had her allegedly swapping her lyrical soprano for a no-nonsense alto and some coarse language, asking for what she should prepare.
“Exactly for that thing,” allegedly responded Saakashvili and then proceeded to predict clashes over Rustavi2, with station-reporter Nodar Meladze doubling “as a field-commander.”
Nizharadze, who performed for US Vice President Joe Biden during his 2011 trip to Tbilisi, ridiculed the tape as a laughable fabrication, while journalist Meladze also has dismissed it.
The recordings’ casual discussion of possible clashes has fed anger against Saakashvili, but also concerns that the Georgian Dream continues the Misha-era tradition of eavesdropping on and leaking private conversations to further political goals.
The leaks come from purportedly Ukrainian websites with obscure origins and liberal use of exclamation marks. One of the sites, Ukrainian Wikileaks, now has been blocked for either non-payment or violation of the host’s rules, but not before posting an explanatory note (with a sextuple exclamation mark) that it is a product of groups of individuals devoted to resisting so-called US and Russian aggression against Ukraine.
The Georgian Ombudsman’s Office has called on prosecutors to investigate the tapes’ provenance and to look into allegations that the Georgian police are violating privacy. Rights-watchdogs have reiterated concerns that eavesdropping without court authorization and leaking private conversations likely remain a serious issue.
These concerns were perhaps best captured by another of the online parodies, featuring what is billed as a “new leaked conversation” between two young men:
“I want to tell you something.”
“Don’t say it over the phone. Call me on Viber.”
“Ah, right, they listen to phones.”
The two switch to Viber, only to recall that “Wait, they listen to Viber, too.”
They switch to Telegram Messenger.
“So, what I wanted to say is, could you bring bread?”
“What kind?”
“Round.”
Giorgi Lomsadze is a journalist based in Tbilisi, and author of Tamada Tales.
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