Category: Vano Merabishvili

Sandro Girgvliani case against Georgian government rescheduled for April

March 11, 2010 by georgiamedia

The Sandro Girgvliani case - about the murder of a young bank employee by high ranking officials of the Interior Ministry - is to be heard, reports the Caucasian Knot, by Europe's highest human rights court on 27 April - the third time the date has had to be changed as a result of the actions of the Georgian government or senior Georgian officials.

Sandro (pictured) was killed after he reportedly verbally insulted a party that included Tako Salakaia, wife of the then and current interior minister Vano Merabishvili. It is not disputed that the killing was committed by senior interior ministry officials. What is in dispute is whether there was a proper investigation and trial or that his family received proper restitution.

The case caused outrage in Georgia in 2006 because the authorities did nothing until the Imedi TV station exposed the involvement of senior interior ministry officials in the case and then rushed to announce they had "solved" the case. When Levan Bukhaidze, Sandro's friend who was also kidnapped and tortured but who escaped when Sandro himself distracted his killers by making a break for it, disputed the identification evidence against one of the accused he was threatened with being thrown in prison - one of many events that suggested the authorities had cut a deal with a certain set of interior ministry officials (they were driving around in seized cars) who faced jail for other matters but who took the rap to ensure the stain of the murder stayed away from even more senior figures.

The anger of 2006 broke out again last August when it was revealed that the killers had been sprung from jail with a stroke of Mikheil Saakashvili's pen - when he signed their pardons.

The Georgian authorities have previously been accused of withholding crucial evidence in the case and the first public hearing, due on 1 December last year, was postponed at their demand - they said they did not have enough lawyers free to prepare their defence. A second date for the hearing was then scrapped after the Georgian judge in the court recused herself from the case and a replacement had to be found.

Whether by accident or design the delay has allowed the authorities to complete a case before the Tbilisi city court and so award the family compensation.

It is rare for applicants to the court have their case heard at all. Public hearings - such as this one - are reserved for the cases the court considers the most serious of all. If and when the case is heard in Strasbourg it is certain to dominate Georgian public life - even if the authorities' media control means they can now squeeze this and any similar embarrassments off national television.

Given its proximity to the expected date of local elections on 30 May it may be that the Georgian authorities try some other subterfuge to delay the case yet again. But whether they will and what they will do is unknown.

The Jacobins of the Caucasus: the revolutionary mentality of the UNM

February 28, 2010 by georgiamedia

Gela Vasadze's long, and still incomplete, essay on the Rose Revolution and its aftermath, "Misha and his team" - written in Russian as Миша И Его Команда and serialised on Gruzia Online - and then translated brilliantly by Timothy Blauvelt and republished on Gregory Levonian's blog - have been recommended here before and anyone wanting to understand the complex web of personal relations and motivations behind the Rose Revolution and its creators would do well to read them.

The latest part - part X - has just been published, and in dealing with the events up to and on 7 November 2007 it provides a fascinating insight into the mentality of the United National Movement (UNM) and its supporters (Vasadze clearly was a party member, and may still be, and remains a critical supporter of Saakashvili) as they unleashed repression.

The media were absolutely central to the Rose Revolution: in Georgia the revolution really was televised by Rustavi 2. The revolution having succeeded, the government have not sought Thermidor, however. The Jacobins of the Caucasus were and are happy to see wealth buy an outlet for propaganda.

There was not and there still has not been any serious attempt to create a commercial, never mind objective, media environment: the three national TV stations are all clients of the regime and all dependent on state cash.

The problem, as the government saw it in 2007, was not that the media were paid propagandists, but that the wrong people were paying them:

If we look at the mass media, even taking into account the relativity of viewer ratings, a situation in which an opposition TV channel is in the first place with three times higher ratings than its closest competitor can hardly be considered normal. The TV station Imedi was a powerful informational weapon, able to smash the hopes of Georgian society to the ground and leave no stone standing.

Indeed Vasadze's narrative as a whole exposes the fundamental contradiction of Saakashvili's project. The president repeatedly states that his aim is the creation of a modern European state in Georgia - Switzerland seems to be his favourite model. But he persists in using the methods of a revolutionary committee of public safety in his attempts to get there and then does not understand why he alienates both his own people - unable to exercise any effective dissent through elective means when the rules have been bent to ensure that every local council, the parliament and the executive are all in the hands of the one party - as well as an international community increasingly fed up with the lies and distortions and the general failure to take responsibility.

So while Vasadze criticises the ruling party for its inflexible belief in its moral superiority, he also goes on to justify the torture of Irakli Okruashvili as a necessity to show "the masses" that the former defence minister was just another man who could be broken.

And - in any case - we are told that Okruashvili and Badri Patarkatsishvili were preparing a coup. The evidence? The hostility of Imedi. So the dissent itself becomes the thing that must be suppressed.

One did not need to possess any exclusive information to understand that Okruashvili and Patarkatsishvili were preparing a blow – to understand this one only had to watch the news broadcasts on Imedi TV. The interests of Okruashvili and Patarkatsishvili intersected, and these interests were composed not so much of hatred for the existing authorities as of the desire to return the power that they had once possessed, but now without any limitations. As concerns Okruashvili everything is clear: the once all-powerful minister had lost out in the “Byzantine” struggle with his alter-ego, Vano Merabishvili. Not so long before “Iron” Irakli had considered himself Saakashvili’s heir to the presidency after the latter’s two terms were up. And as for Patarkatsishvili, after the Rose Revolution he had used his proximity to Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania to decide many “political-economic” issues, which gave the oligarch power that was no less, if not more, than that of Irakli Okruashvili.

But, of course, media hostility is just what elected governments in mature democracies have to deal with. Imagine if Barrack Obama took this attitude to Fox News, or Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown thought the same about the Sun newspaper? Both outlets are hugely hostile to their respective governments, but neither man would even dream of sending in special forces to smash them up.

And, again, Vasadze also demonstrates the reluctance of the UNM and its supporters to take responsibility for its actions. Having, rather more fairly than is often the case, examined the popular anger that put people in the streets in November 2007, and then the damage done to the country by what he clearly regards as an over-reaction, to what were already fading protests, on 7 November 2007 (a mistake which he suggests was Gigi Ugulava's fault and not Vano Merabishvili's - whom, he suggests, was arguing for patience), he then discusses at length - and without the slightest piece of evidence - the idea that it was all a Russian plot afterall.

Conspiracy theories are beloved of those who are unwilling to examine their own failings (which is why, sadly, they are all too prevalent in some parts of the Georgian opposition). But they are useless as a guide to action. The only evidence that authorities have ever been able to offer to the public of Russian involvement in the events of 7 November is an intercepted phone call from a fringe figure, albeit one with a powerful surname - Tsotne Gamsakhurdia. And the fact that it was rushed out on 7 November 2007 itself and the authorities declined to press ahead with a prosecution at the time points to the regime's need to find a fig leaf to cover physical attacks on the demonstrators than a serious belief that Gamsakhurdia was a spy or coup leader.

Is the regime trying to censor the internet?

February 14, 2010 by georgiamedia

Links from one of Georgia's most popular websites - myvideo.ge - that allowed visitors to watch the independent TV station Kavkasia (distributed by cable in Tbilisi) have disappeared - prompting fears that the Saakashvili regime is seeking to close off public access to information sources that might give the opposition access to a wider audience (given that the three national TV stations are all controlled or directed by the government).

"It is not surprising that our link has disappeared. Real TV is still available on the website, so everything is clear for me," Nino Jangirashvili, Kavkasia's director told InterPressNews.

Real TV is an internet channel devoted to smearing opposition figures and is closely associated with Vano Merabishvili, the interior minister.

Kavkasia can still be watched via iptv.ge.

He was once wanted by Interpol, but now Chanturia claims he was never sought by Georgian authorities

February 12, 2010 by georgiamedia

Giorgi "Gia" Chanturia has, as expected, been announced as the Christian Democrats' candidate for mayor of Tbilisi today but immediately came under fire about the circumstances under which he left Georgia in 2004 after being sacked by Mikheil Saakashvili as head of the Georgian International Oil Corporation.

Chaturia, reports Civil.ge, was forced to deny, in an interview with Maestro TV, that he had been forced to flee the country, or even that he was ever wanted by the Georgian authortites.

However, as the website points out, he was Interpol's wanted list for several years after he left Georgia: so the issue of why he is now refusing to tell the truth can be added to the list we posed yesterday:

• Was he guilty of corruption?
• Have the authorities dropped the charges?
• If yes, what was their explanation?
• If no, did he strike a plea bargain with Vano Merabishvili and what were the terms?
• And if the charges have not been dropped, and he has not struck a bargain, why does he think the authorities are happy for him to run for one of the most important public offices in Georgia?