Feasting and toasting have long been an integral part of Georgia’s cultural identity. But shifting priorities mean that Georgians are redefining the custom of banquets, known as supras.
Under President Mikheil Saakashvli, schools in Georgia made progress in teaching English and cracking down on bribery. Now, following Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili’s rise to power, the Georgian government is taking on a new challenge in reforming the education system – overhauling the state-run school security service known as the “mandaturebi.”
While a struggle is intensifying in Georgia between Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili and President Mikheil Saakashvili over investigations and arrests of former senior government officials, a battle over the nomination of the country’s top military officer appears to be resolved.
A rusty and dilapidated century-old manganese mine is emerging as a focal point of spreading labor discontent in Georgia. A trade union leader blames the libertarian economic reform approach taken by President Mikheil Saakashvili’s government for stoking worker anger.
It was, perhaps, only fitting that the front door of Georgia’s glistening, new, Epcot-Center-style parliament got stuck on the day of the building's October 21 opening.
The Spanish-designed, 133.7-million-lari ($80.7 million) building in the central city of Kutaisi had been billed as a grandiose monument to President Mikheil Saakashvili’s new Georgia, a country where the changes would be as radical as the glass building which housed its legislature.
But now, post-election, the shoe is on the other foot. Saakashvili’s United National Movement (UNM) is in opposition, and the Georgian Dream coalition headed by businessman Bidzina Ivanishvili that triumphed at the October 1 polls is determined to move parliament back to Tbilisi.
The building, still under construction, has long been a point of contention between the UNM and Georgian Dream. One side sees it as all about regional development; the other as all about presidential egoism.
Tina Khidasheli, a parliamentarian from the Republican Party, a Georgian-Dream coalition member, estimated that work on moving parliament out of Kutaisi would begin within the next two months. The change would require a constitutional amendment that would most likely come as a package of proposed amendments, fellow Georgian-Dream MP Davit Onoprishvili told EurasiaNet.org.
But, with 85 of parliament’s 150 seats, the Georgian Dream lacks the 100 votes needed for the changes.
Georgia took a quantum leap forward in its democratization process when President Mikheil Saakashvili provided for a smooth transfer of power following his party’s defeat at the ballot box in early October.
