Georgia has seen political battle waged before with roses and rallies, tent cities and tear gas. Will it now see battle done instead with a pen?
A new decree grants the Ministry of Justice the right to “edit” legislation after it becomes law, a development legal advocates believe could put even more power in the hands of Georgia’s already dominant executive branch.
The first casualty was a “this” that was allegedly removed from the official version of a legal amendment that restricts funding for political parties.
In the version with the “this,” the amendment forced parties to return any unspent donations from businesses within three days of the amendment’s (“this law’s”) passage. Funds not returned could be claimed by the state.
Seeing the “this” and thinking they had just days to unload millions in unspent donations, allies of billionaire opposition leader Bidzina Ivanishvili started spending “hastily” to beat the three-day deadline, said Davit Usupashvili, the co-leader of the Ivanishvili-allied Republican Party
Via his businesses and partners, Ivanishvili had donated a reported 4.1 million lari (about $2.46 million) to parties associated with his Georgian Dream organization.
But then, in the version of the amendment published in Matsne December 29, the government’s official ledger, the “this” disappeared. That meant that the spend-off had been in vain.
Usupashvili charged that “a crime has been committed,” and urged the prosecutor’s office to look into the disappearance of the wayward demonstrative pronoun.
Twenty-year-old Tbilisi supermarket clerk Kristina works seven days a week, eight hours a day, making a pre-tax monthly salary of about $121 (200 laris). She’s an hourly worker, but since late December she has not been paid. Still, she keeps working: in an economy where jobs are scarce, it’s not like she has a lot of options.
Gambling spots sometimes seem as commonplace as khachapuri bakeries in Georgia’s capital Tbilisi. So it’s no surprise that amid the strong growth of the Internet, a rapidly increasing number of Georgians have a fever for online betting.
One can imagine that if Mikheil Saakashvili had never become the chief executive of Georgia, he would have excelled as a Donald Trump-style real estate developer.
Georgians nostalgic for the sweet, Christmas smell of a fir tree might feel a lot like Charlie Brown this holiday. While “big, shiny aluminum” trees abound, homegrown Georgian fir trees are a rarity in Tbilisi this year.
The lack of real fir trees is somewhat ironic for Georgia, given the country’s reputation as a vital source of cones for fir tree nurseries in Denmark. But new regulations, and higher fines, for illegally cutting fir trees could be having a Grinch-like effect on the local market.
While the city appears flooded with artificial trees, there are currently less than a handful of fir tree sellers braving the December cold to sell the genuine article.
Two of Tbilisi’s four official Christmas tree lots are empty; a third boasts one lone seller with two scraggly trees cut from his front yard in western Georgia.
A new, stricter policy to weed out illegal logging could be to blame for the lackluster selection of local Christmas trees. Higher fines, more forest monitoring and a document registering the origin of the tree are all designed to tighten control over illegal logging, noted Nino Endukidze, a deputy minister at the Georgian Ministry of Energy and National Resources.
The new fines start at 500 lari (approximately $300) for the first offense if the fir tree has been cut down for personal use, and double to 1,000 lari ($600) if the tree has been illegally cut down by a registered business, she said. But Endukidze denied that the restrictions are to blame for the apparent lack of fir trees this season.
Much like his entry into Georgian politics this past October, insiders unceremoniously mocked Georgian billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili when he made his initial foray into the highbrow world of international modern art some five years ago. Today nobody’s laughing.
In a society where people love nothing more than a freewheeling, hours-long chat with friends, the trend seems anomalous. Statistics indicate gregarious Georgians are turning to Facebook for news and information.
A proposed highway through Georgia’s Black Sea wetlands and the introduction of hunting in national parks are raising concerns that Tbilisi’s focus on immediate economic gain could result in the destruction of natural treasures.
