Electoral Platform of Georgian Dream and Reality
One might wonder: why does GD try to engage in such practices? Why do they want to grab all the power now and try to do so by disregarding democratic processes? There are could be many answers but the one that makes the most sense to me is that they understand how fleeting their success might be.
To win the elections GD aggressively campaigned as being a complete opposite of UNM on most issues. Didn’t really matter whether that was building a bridge in the center of Tbilisi, moving the parliament to Kutaisi, introducing RFID chips into IDs, introducing hybrid corn into Georgian agriculture or almost anything else. If UNM was for it, GD was against it, and not just against – but against to the point of irrationality. UNM was evil, and anything they did was evil by default. Now, after two months have passed, it seems like GD has discovered that they have to do exactly the same things they accused UNM of just a few months ago. Mover, it has become clear that many of the accusations they laid against UNM are not holding true. Add to that the fact that they severely over-promised during their electoral campaign and had to renege on many of their promises after coming to power, and we will see that their popularity is in danger. Quite soon the people will see that GD didn’t materially change anything, and probably made a few things much worse. I don’t know if this will happen 3, 6, or 12 months from now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if GD’s popularity were to fall below 50% in less than a year.
Perhaps the thing that can decrease GD’s popularity the most is the realization that many accusations GD made against UNM were severely exaggerated or even invalid. To me, this has been clear even before the elections and this is why I never supported GD. However, many in Georgia had a different point of view, and in their mind, once UNM lost power, all of their wrongdoings would be exposed, justices would be restored, and this would lead to dramatic changes in the lives of ordinary people. Let’s go through some of these accusations and see what has been actually happening.
1. Elite Corruption
Perhaps the thing that UNM was the most frequently accused of was so-called “elite corruption.” I frequently heard GD supporters say that while UNM was able to eliminate regular corruption, they made elite corruption more pervasive. By elite corruption people meant that while regular government officials stopped taking bribes, high-ranking government officials kept enriching themselves through illegal means. How did this elite corruption manifest itself? Well, I’ve heard quite a few things but I’ll try to summarize the most common ones:
Business seizures – it was widely believe by GD supporters that high-ranking government officials frequently engaged in seizure of business for their benefit. The belief was that successful businessmen were approached by the government officials and forced to transfer ownership of their businesses (either partially or completely) to high-ranking UNM officials or their relatives/friends. This belief was so engrained in many Georgians that they believed that most businesses in Georgia were either directly or indirectly owned by top ranking UNM members.
Well, after two months in power GD failed to charge a single high-ranking UNM government official with a seizure of anyone’s business. In fact, I am not aware of any government officials from the previous government being charged with a seizure of anyone’s business. Some might say that two months are not enough – that the government is collecting and examining evidence, building up cases etc. But this seems highly unlikely to me given how they didn’t have an issue with arresting an ex-minister of defense for “verbally and physically” abusing soldiers solely on witness testimony a couple of days after his case was opened.
Government racketeering of businesses – another widespread belief was that UNM government made most (if not all) businesses pay a portion of their profits either directly or indirectly to high-ranking UNM members. I was even quoted some numbers in the range of 20% or 25% that UNM charged the business to allow them to operate. The result of this belief was an expectation that when UNM loses power prices for most goods and services will come down.
Well, UNM has lost power over two months ago – so, the racketeering must have stopped. But the prices didn’t go down any more than their annual trend would imply. In fact, for some categories of products the prices have even increases. So, if there was any racketeering GD must have adapted the practice. Though, I am more inclined to believe that there was no racketeering in the first place
Extortion of money from the population through monopolies – this was another widespread belief that went as follows: most of the companies in Georgia are controlled by high-ranking UNM members or people connected with them. So, to maximize their profits they have entered into monopolistic agreements with each other and are charging regular people extremely high prices. This was believed to be the case for utilities, gasoline, pharmaceuticals, agricultural and most other products. So, GD had campaigned aggressively on the promise of reducing prices. The expectation within the population was that if GD came to power prices for gasoline, electricity, natural gas would fall by as much as 50%.
Well, things turned out not to be as simple once GD came to power. On November 28th, Ivanishvili publicly acknowledged that his party exaggerated the potential reduction of prices on natural gas and electricity, but said that he believed that 10% reduction in prices was possible. On December 26th, he again acknowledged that he was optimistic and natural gas tariff was fair and would not be reduced at all. Electricity tariff was in fact reduced on December 24th by as much as 25% for certain categories of consumers but this reduction is at the moment temporary (it was enacted for 3 months) and is pending a permanent agreement with electricity companies that want to be compensated through other means for the lost revenue. Adding to this the fact that prices in most other categories of products didn’t fall dramatically (and as I mentioned increases in some categories), it has become clear that whatever “monopolization” UNM was doing didn’t affect price levels in the country, and there was no “extortion of money through monopolization” of any sort.
Oppressing businesses – this was perhaps the most widespread belief and it was the one which GD was most vocal about. The essence of the belief was that UNM government oppressed businessmen who were not under their control by imposing unfair fines and eventually driving them out of business. Supposedly, UNM did this to drive the competition out of the market and increase profits for businesses owned by high-ranking UNM members. The belief was that most, if not all, business were at some point oppressed by UNM.
Undoubtedly UNM’s record when it comes to property rights has been far from stellar. They indeed disregarded them on quite a few occasions, and it is highly likely that some government officials used their power to advance their personal goals. But was this practice endemic? Until recently it would have been difficult to tell. But now, since UNM is out of power we can try to directionally estimate the magnitude of the problem.
Since the new government came to power about two months ago, there has been consistently a line forming outside the prosecutor’s office to submit complaints against UNM government. At times this line was hundreds of people long. According to the information released recently, roughly 7,000 complaints have been submitted to date. The government has not yet released statistics on the nature of these complaints, but it is not difficult to guess that most of them are business-related. Basically, those who feel that they were mistreated by the previous (UNM) government – e.g. the government imposed unfair fines on their businesses, or forced them out of business for one reason or another – want to restore justice. Now, let’s assume that 80% of the complaints are business-related and that all of them are valid (a big assumption, if you ask me). Also, let’s assume that not everyone who was mistreated is going to submit a complaint – let’s say that for everyone who has submitted a complaint there are 4 people who were mistreated but either did not get around to submitting a complaint yet, or feel like it’s not worth the effort. So, we get about 28,000 “oppressed” businessmen total. Now, let’s say that most of the violations happened in the last 4 years (and those that happened in the earlier years of UNM rule have been forgotten) – this means, on average, UNM government was “oppressing” 7K business per year.
Undoubtedly, this number looks huge. But let’s compare it to the total number of business in Georgia. According to the business registry, as of January 1, 2012, there were about 400K businesses registered in Georgia. To be conservative, let’s assume that half of those are inactive – this gives us 200K active businesses. What this means, is that even under very conservative (or generous – depending how you look at it) estimates 3% of business where “oppressed” by the government each year. Now, if I were to make my assumptions a bit more realistic – let’s say only half of the complaints are valid, and that the majority of those who have not yet submitted a complaint feel like the “oppression” was rather minimal, we’ll get a number that is well under 1%.
In short, in the worst case the UNM government had “oppressed” about 3% of the businessmen per year, and in a more realistic case this number was under 1%. Now, this might be a huge number – I don’t have a benchmark to compare it against other countries, but it is nowhere close to what many in Georgia believed – that the government had oppressed nearly all or a majority of businesses. One must agree that there is a big difference between “a majority” and less than 1%. So, once again, GD’s accusation is turning out to be greatly exaggerated.
Widespread misuse of government funds – another belief that many of those in the opposition to UNM shared was that UNM officials greatly benefited from various projects that the government undertook. Many believed that building roads, parks, fountains etc. was just a pretext for the government to steal money from the people, and that a large portion of the government budget was used to benefit high-ranking UNM members. This belief led to an assumption that once UNM lost power and the widespread misuse of funds was eliminated, the new government would be able to spend the money more efficiently. One result of such belief was that in case UNM lost power, pensions can be increased dramatically or higher education could be made almost entirely free. The logic went like this: if UNM is stealing money, once they are gone there will be more money to be spent on social needs.
Well, again – UNM lost power and GD had an opportunity to put together their own budget. The budget they put together was quite similar to UNM’s budget. Moreover, it didn’t envision any dramatic increases in pensions (in fact, pension increases implied by GD’s budget are lower than what UNM promised for 2013) and no other social programs benefited materially. The conclusions are easy to draw: either UNM was not misusing government funds, or GD is doing the same thing. And again, I tend to believe that it is the former.
I don’t want to be misunderstood. Undoubtedly, there were problems under UNM. It is very probable that some business were “expropriated” (though, I would like the new government to prove this in court), that some monopolies were looked at leniently, that a large number of entrepreneurs were fined unjustly, and that some government officials misused public funds for personal enrichment. However, these issues were not any worse in Georgia than in many Eastern and Southern European countries, and they were greatly exaggerated by GD during their electoral campaign. This exaggeration led to unreasonable expectations for a large part of Georgian population. For if UNM was as bad as GD made it look, once UNM was gone prices must fall by 25% (no more racketeering of business or government sponsored monopolies), pensions would triple (no more widespread misuse of public funds), economic growth would explode (no more oppressions or expropriation of business). The reality is such though that none of this is happening or will happen. Prices are likely to remain roughly the same, pensions will rise by as much as UNM forecasted, economic growth is likely to slow somewhat. Undoubtedly, many of GD voters will be displeased by this.
2. Police State
Another accusation frequently brought against UNM was that they had created a police state. That arrests were arbitrary, that due process was violated, that innocent people ended up in jail, that violation of human rights was endemic, and that the justice systems was a servant of party interests.
While again, there definitely were issues in this area under UNM rule (especially as it relates to an absence of independent judiciary), the problems were greatly exaggerated by GD. I’ve heard a variety of claims to support the accusations above. Just as I did above, I will try to summarize the most common ones:
Arbitrary arrests of innocent people – it was widely believed by GD supporters that UNM put a large number of innocent people behind bars either on false pretexts or in violation of due process. The new government had over 2 months to address this issue. So far they’ve taken two actions in this area: declaring about 190 inmates to be political prisoners and issuing a wide-scale amnesty which will result in nearly immediate release of about 3,000 prisoners. Let’s consider these actions separately.
Political prisoners – on December 5th, just a month after taking power, the GD-dominated parliament recognized 190 inmates as political prisoners. The process by which these 190 people were selected was highly rushed and flawed. In fact, reputable Georgian NGO’s such as GYLA and Article 42 (organizations which cannot be suspected of having any pro-UNM sympathies) withdrew from the process stating that the deadlines set by the parliament were unrealistic and didn’t allow for proper review of the cases. In fact, these two NGO’s counted only about 60 prisoners that were put in jail in violation of the due process. Time constraint was not the only flaw of the process – there were many more flaws and some of them put in question the objectivity of the entire process. I’ll leave it to the reader to hypothesize why the new government decided not to take an extra month or two and acted rashly in deciding such an important and sensitive question. What I want to point out is that we can estimate the number of people put in jail in violation of the due process and this number is definitely below 200, and probably around 60.
Now, let’s compare it with Georgia’s inmate population. In October 2012 there were about 22K prisoners in Georgia. This would imply the number of those who were wrongfully imprisoned is between 0.3% and 1% of inmates. On the reverse, these means that over 99% of prisoners in Georgian prisons were not “arbitrarily arrested innocent people.” So, the accusation that UNM government put a large number of innocent people behind bars simply does not hold true.
Amnesty – as I mentioned above, the second action that the new government undertook in the area of prisoners was to pass a wide-scale amnesty (this law was passed by overruling the president’s veto). I want to make it clear that this amnesty is not viewed as a release of innocent people – it is widely accepted that those released by the amnesty are guilty of the crimes they were imprisoned for. In fact, it is expected both by the population and the new government that the crime rates will go up after the amnesty takes effect. So, again: the amnesty does not release innocent people – but gives another chance to those who have committed crimes. While rationality of this action can be debated, let’s look at the results it is aimed to achieve.
The amnesty will immediately release up to 3,000 inmates or about 15% of Georgia’s prison population. Another 6,000 inmates will potentially end up with their prison terms reduced significantly. One of the goals of this action was to reduce the load on Georgia’s penitentiary system. During the electoral campaign GD frequently criticized UNM for increasing Georgia’s incarceration rate to be one of the highest in the world and 2nd highest in Europe (behind Russia). If we look at the facts though, Georgia’s prison population has been declining steadily throughout 2012. In fact, in November 2012 there were almost 3,000 fewer imprisoned people in Georgia as there were in January 2012. So, UNM released almost the same number of people from prisons in 2012 as is envisioned by GD’s amnesty – though they did it quietly.
Moreover, even after the amnesty takes effect, Georgia will still have one of the highest incarceration rates and will be 3rd in Europe (behind Russia and Belarus) on this metric. The point I am trying to make is that this widely publicized amnesty does not change anything materially. Georgia was already on the downward trend in reducing incarceration rates under UNM – the amnesty will speed up this trend but won’t change things dramatically.
To summarize: the accusations that UNM arbitrarily arrested and unjustly imprisoned a large number of people have been greatly exaggerated. Over 99% of the prison population was arrested for real crimes in accordance with the law. Moreover, UNM had started the trend of reducing Georgia’s prison population which swelled as a result of zero-tolerance against crime policy. In 2012 they reduced the prison population by about 3,000 people – a number similar to what GD’s amnesty is aimed to accomplish.
Dysfunctional plea-bargaining system – it was widely believed that the plea-barraging system in Georgia was used by UNM government to extract money from the population. While I agree that there were serious flaws in this system, the extent of the issue has again been greatly exaggerated by GD. Let’s look at the numbers:
In Georgia, about 50% of the cases are settled through the plea barraging system. This means that over the last 4 years about 40K cases went through this system. How many of these were conducted improperly? Well, it is very difficult to tell until the new government conducts proper analysis in this area, but again, we can use some directional estimates based on the number of complaints submitted against the UNM government in recent months. To remind, according to the recently released information about 7,000 people submitted complaints against UNM government. Let’s assume that about 25% were from those who went through the plea bargaining system (this is a very rough assumption, but the logic is as follows: 50% of those who complained went through the judicial system – the rest decided to pay fines etc. without ever engaging the court; of these 50% went through the court process and the remainder utilized pleas bargaining system). To round up, this gives us about 2,000 people. Now, let’s assume that not everyone who was wronged by the plea bargaining system was has submitted or will submit a claim. Let’s say that for every one who submits a claim there is 1 more person who would not. Also, let’s assume that all claims are valid. This gives us about 4K people who were wronged by the plea-bargaining system.
What this implies that that about 10% of the cases that went through the plea bargaining system were handled with violations. Now, again, this is a very rough estimate – the number could be 20% or it could be 5% - it is very difficult to tell. But I am fairly confident that it is somewhere in this range. Undoubtedly, 10% is a significant number and this exposes real flaws in the plea bargaining system in Georgia. But again, on the reverse of this is that about 90% of plea bargains were conducted properly. So, once again, the notion that UNM government utilized plea bargaining system to convert Georgia into a police state was greatly exaggerated.
Violation of human rights – this was another common accusation against UNM government. I will spend very little time on this simply because, as far as I can tell, UNM government didn’t violate human rights any more than an average Eastern European country. This can be seen simply by looking at the number of cases submitted from Georgia to the European Court of Human Rights each year. This number is about the European average.
Again, I don’t want to be misunderstood: there are some real problems in regards to justice in Georgia. The courts are hardly independent, the plea bargaining system needs to be reformed, and same goes for the penitentiary system. But it is simply not true that under UNM Georgia was a police state where a large number of innocent people were arbitrarily arrested, human rights violations were abnormally high, or that plea bargaining system was wrongfully applied in the vast majority of cases. As we can see, the new government failed to identify any significant number of wrongfully imprisoned people (even through the rushed and somewhat arbitrary process). They are not doing anything dramatically different from what UNM was doing in terms of reducing the number of prisoners in Georgia. The investigations into high-profile cases of when UNM government allegedly violated human rights so far have yielded little results, and my guess is that little will come of them.
To summarize this entire section: the accusations that GD laid against UNM during the electoral campaign are turning out to be greatly exaggerated. The new government struggles to identify and prove many of the wrongdoings they accused UNM of. No cases of “elite corruption” have been brought to court yet, no significant number “arbitrarily arrested innocent people” has been identified. Instead, GD has been charging ex-UNM officials with “physically and verbally abusing soldiers,” illegal surveillance, and bar fights that happened a year and a half ago. The rumors still circulate in Georgian society about how UNM stole billions, oppressed majority (or even all) businesses, imprisoned thousands of innocent people etc. But the longer these rumors remain without proof, the fewer people will believe them.
Moreover, many of GD’s predictions and promises have been turning out to be wrong. The prices on most categories of products did not fall, pensions could not be increased beyond what UNM promised, court acquittal rates remain about the same as they were under UNM. In fact, in many areas GD will not be able to do anything differently when compared to UNM. They will not be able to relax the financial burden on business significantly otherwise they risk missing budget obligations. This means that fining of businessmen will continue. They will not be able to step too far away from the “zero-tolerance against crime” policy because it will mean dramatic increase in crime rates. So, the prison population will remain fairly high over the next few years. Even in minor things they have to mimic UNM. For example, I frequently heard from UNM’s opposition that their ministers were too young (frequently around 30 or even below) and that this was unacceptable. Well, GD’s minister of interior is 30 years old.
Given how high people’s expectations were that GD will enact a dramatic transformation, it is not difficult to conclude that once the reality hits, GD stands to lose a large portion of its popular support. As I mentioned before, I don’t know whether this will happen 3, 6, or 12 months from now, but it wouldn’t be a surprise to me if GD’s popularity fell below 50% in the next year. So, the surest way for GD to keep power in the long term is to try to undermine and destroy UNM in the near future. If they fail to do that, they will face a steep competition in the presidential elections in October of this year, and even steep competition in the local elections of 2014. So, it is not surprising (even if disheartening) that GD has engaged in undemocratic tactics to monopolize power as soon as possible. And this is the real tragedy.
To make myself clear: I am not advocating that GD should be removed from power, that the parliament should be disbanded or anything of this sort. GD was elected by the people and they should remain in power until they lose election. Even though I think their rule will be detrimental for Georgia (for many reasons that go beyond what I’ve written above), I would like to see them run the country until the next democratic elections and beyond if they manage to garner enough political support. The main thing though, is to ensure that these elections are democratic. And the only thing, in my mind, that will ensure democratic elections is a presence of a strong opponent. Thus, I see persistence of UNM in Georgia’s politics as a guarantee (even if a weak one) against GD’s monopolization of power and in the end, continuation of the democratic development of Georgia.
The point is simple, those who turn a blind eye to the undemocratic things GD is doing now are doing a great disservice to the country. Those who say that it is OK for GD to do this because “UNM did it too” must understand that in the end, this will throw Georgia backward not forward. Even those who dislike or even hate UNM should understand that UNM represents a large portion of Georgia – currently between 20% and 40%. And in a democracy opinion of a minority – especially such a large minority – should be respected. For if GD is allowed to monopolize power, many of the developments of the last 9 years will be negated and many of the mistakes of this period will have to be repeated in the future. And I am not quite sure it will work out at all next time.
