Misha's pick for PM becomes Vladimir's pick for president

December 24, 2009 by georgiamedia

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Former Saakashvili loyalist Zurab Noghaideli (pictured) has made yet another trip to Moscow, this time to sign a formal alliance agreement between his "Movement for a Fair Georgia" and ruling "United Russia" party.

United Russia are the builders of Russia's so-called "sovereign democracy" where the formal mechanisms of elections, parliamentary opposition and media diversity exist but, in fact, all are more or less centrally controlled.

There are some similarities with the setup Mikheil Saakashvili has been building - partly with Noghaideli's help as prime minister from February 2005 to November 2007 - though the Russian regime is far more brutal with dissident voices and independent journalists than the Georgian regime has ever been.

Noghaideli was Georgian prime minister as the state accelerated away from the ideals of the Rose Revolution and towards authoritarianism: he was in office both when the interior ministry operated "death squads" responsible for killing Sandro Girgvliani and others and also when riot police attacked peaceful demonstrators on 7 November and then special forces smashed up the Imedi TV station.

Of course, now he has signed an alliance with Moscow he can expect regular TV coverage in Georgia as an exemplar of the regime's constant claim that all the opposition are tools of the Kremlin.

At the same time the Kremlin's global propaganda effort, such as Russia Today, will surely mirror that effort in an attempt to counter the Georgian government's international efforts to focus attention on Russian hostility to Georgia and Moscow's role as a military and economic prop to the breakaway administrations in Tskhinvali and Sokhumi.

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