Eurasia note 103 - Georgia's President Won't Yield To Successor

Tbilisi's protest organisers hide ultimate aim

• Georgia's president vows to stay in office regardless of successor’s election

• Opposition does not reveal objectives beyond calling government illegitimate

• Tbilisi protests are less about Europe than NATO's proxy war with Russia.

• NGOs & NATO Fellas - 'independent' tacticians - have key role in protests

• Marchers lack leaders of stature; can’t point to a programme

• Strategy relies on ousting Georgian Dream party and installing temporary leaders

• European politicians from Poland and Baltics join marches in Tbilisi

• Romania's cancelled election of a NATO skeptic is a hint of what's to come

• War with Russia could be a multi-decade endeavour

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Romania Coup Is Your Western Warning - Has the EU become a dictatorship? (Dec 07, 2024)
What Is This Europe That Georgia Would Join? (May 7, 2024)
Eurasia note #83 - Armenians Flee Karabakh - Yerevan yields Artsakh to Azerbaijan, Russia stands aside (Sep 26, 2023)
Eurasia note #72 - Tourist Batumi's Lessons For Today - A idiosyncratic oil port reveals the highs and lows of industrial planning (Mar 03, 2023)
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(2,800 words will fly by in about 12 minutes).

Footballer Mikheil Kavelashvili elected president of Georgia

Tbilisi, Dec 14, 2024

The country of Georgia has a new president, but the old one refuses to resign.

Former soccer professional Mikheil Kavelashvili, 53, once a striker for Manchester City, was the sole candidate since the opposition put up no candidate against the ruling Georgian Dream.

Current president Salome Zourabichvili says she won't step down, because she does not recognise the October parliamentary election.

Politicised NGOs supported Zourabichvili - declaring the presidential election, like the parliamentary election, “illegitimate.”

Thus democratic institutions descend into farce.

Georgia's youthful protesters have little time for such complexities. They cite Harry Potter as an influence in the firework assault on the parliament in Tbilisi.

Intoxication with mystery extends to objectives. The incantation, "No to Russia" tells us nothing of their intent. Spokesmen for the protests cannot or do not say what they seek.

There is no figure to rally the opposition since the protests are organised by faceless NGOs. Georgia's former president Zourabichvili has been forced into role.

As a French-born diplomat, she marches with members of the European Parliament, who this week joined from Poland, Lithuania, Germany, Netherlands and France.

Hope and change

This is not snark. It is very important that youth should know WHAT THEY ARE MARCHING FOR. If they are turned into a blind vanguard for "hope and change" they are no different to the SA or the Komsomol.

So let's guess at a direction and dive in the hope of finding pearls.

We know what the Hogwarts protestors oppose: they don't want to disclose their foreign funding; they won't recognise the election results, even though the observers found no major fault. The protestors conclude that the Georgian Dream government is illegitimate.

Let's get this misdirection out of the way.

The election was supervised by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). The team was headed by Pascal Allizard, vice president of the Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee of the French Senate, who said:

“The elections provided voters with a broad range of choices and were well-administered in terms of technical preparation. While candidates were generally able to campaign freely, the campaign rhetoric was highly divisive and polarized.”

However Allizard also highlighted some critical concerns raised by the preliminary findings of the observer mission. These included “voter pressure, financial imbalances creating an uneven playing field, the under representation of women on party lists, and other challenges.” [1]

The "illegitimate" claim must be taken with a pinch of salt. It is spurious — like the claim that the ruling Georgian Dream called off accession talks with the European Union. Brussels had already halted the process in June and cancelled aid before the election. Prime minister Irakli Kobakhidze simply confirmed the same on Nov 29th.

The final plank of protest is the Law on the Transparency of Foreign Influence which protestors say was imposed at the behest of Russia.

The law says NGOs and organisations who receive more than 20 per cent of their funding from foreign governments and foundations must declare it.

This is not a "Russian law" since it is modeled on the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) passed in 1938. Georgia's law is far less restrictive. FARA, and more recent U.S. laws require ANY foreign monies or assistance be disclosed.

Sherlock Holmes or Hogwarts

We must search for clues. Georgia, Georgescu... hmm. Could there be a link?

We find parallels on the other side of the Black Sea in recent elections in Romania and Moldova, about which the European Union has also protested loudly. This gives us a hint of their intentions and objectives in Georgia.

Western Balkans and, across the Black Sea, Georgia

Highlighted is the "Western Balkans" the countries the EU is very slowly considering for accession. For political reasons and probably NATO's strategy, the EC includes Georgia in the WB. As you can see, it is in the Caucasus, and Asia. But it is, notably, under Russia's vulnerable belly.

Romania's constitutional court this month cancelled the second round of elections which Călin Georgescu was likely to win, having led in the first.

Georgescu is a globalist and an insider — a former executive of the Club of Rome, senior official of the United Nations, an expert on sustainable development.

But he also questions the war with Russia in Ukraine. He says Romania’s membership of NATO is not an unalloyed benefit. He has criticised the placement of a U.S. Aegis Ashore missile defence system in Deveselu, in southern Romania.

NATO has ambitions to expand its base in Constanta on the Black Sea coast. At 3,000 hectares it would become NATO's largest base in Europe, able to house 10,000 personnel.

And so the vote of the Romanian people has been annulled... on the flimsy pretext that TikTok videos contributed to his success.

See Romania Coup Is Your Western Warning - Has the EU become a dictatorship? (Dec 07, 2024)

In neighbouring Moldova, the pro-NATO candidate won when last minute postal votes flooded in from abroad. Excluding votes from abroad, president Maia Sandu would have lost to Aleksandr Stoianoglo with 51.2 per cent of the vote in November's presidential election.

Moldova and breakaway Transdniestria have declared a state of emergency as Ukraine prepares stop transiting gas from Russia. Ukraine has said it will not extend its contract to transit gas from Russia's Gazprom when it expires on Dec 31.

In this article we shall look at how events in Georgia fit into a strategy from Syria to Somalia (the 2001 plan to take out "seven countries in five years"). We shall think the unthinkable: is tiny Georgia of three million people a stepping stone to regime change in much bigger countries?

Can we see through the rhetoric of "Georgia is Europe" to the manipulation in the shadows — however much we may sympathise with the people of Georgia, still struggling to thrive after the collapse of the USSR, 33 years ago this month.

EU/NATO policy towards other countries tells us about their intent. The Europe that Georgia's youth seek to embrace writhes in crisis — energy, financial and political —and increasingly sees war as the best solution. The pace of conflict is being accelerated with just a month to go before the new Trump administration in the U.S.