The deaths of a police officer and a demonstrator amid the break-up of a Tbilisi street protest on May 26 have opened a grim, new chapter Georgia’s political struggle between the government and its critics.
In the first decade-plus following the Soviet Union’s collapse, Georgians showed themselves to be a protest-happy people. But local experts say Georgian citizens are now losing steam, with apathy taking the place of activism.
Georgia’s main regulatory authority for radio and television says preference in the granting of broadcast licenses will be given to applicants that seek to entertain, rather than inform. Some observers in Tbilisi see the announcement as a government attempt to manipulate upcoming presidential and legislative elections.
Forget multi-million-dollar salaries, commercial endorsements or plush clubhouses. Without a proper field, uniforms or even other teams to compete against, players on Georgia’s one and only baseball team are motivated purely by passion for the game.
A couple of weeks ago, a 75-year-old Georgian villager, Hayastan Shakarian, became an overnight media sensation because she allegedly severed Internet connections in Georgia and Armenia while using a shovel to scavenge for copper. But the real story has less to do with the interruption in Internet service than with the decidedly low-tech, low-glamor topic of scrap metal.
Officials hope a government program to equip first-graders with netbooks marks the first step in an education revolution in Georgia. Critics caution, however, that for computers to have the desired impact on learning, teachers need to be keeping pace with technological changes.
Hit by low harvest yields and double-digit inflation, hundreds of Georgia’s 700,000 small-scale farmers are confronting the start of the spring planting season without the money to purchase seeds.
Georgia’s photogenic mountains, woodlands and coastlines are often featured in tourism ad campaigns, but environmentalists say a radical restructuring of the government’s leading environmental agency indicates that officials in Tbilisi are ready to trash the environment. Officials strenuously deny such allegations.
In his first deal in the former Soviet Union, American property developer Donald Trump is bringing his trademark to Georgia as part of a large-scale luxury housing project. But while Tbilisi is hoping Trump’s star power helps draw investment in the country, analysts caution that there may be a limit to The Donald effect.
