Wu Wei

How will the protest end?

Russia Today is asking  the following question, and the poll shows:

Georgian protests will end with:

    36% : Saakashvili's resignation

    25% : Opposition failure

    10% : A power-sharing deal

    29% : A bloodbath

 OK, there are lots of reasons why this might not be a representative poll but it's depressing that so many think a bloodbath is a possibility.

I was thinking a power sharing deal was more likely.

Aliyev doesn't get it

As reported by the Moscow Times here (hat tip to Sloph):

Azeri President Ilham Aliyev said Saturday that he wanted Russia to serve as a transit route for his country to begin selling gas to Europe, a proposal that could please Western policymakers who have been looking to diversify their energy supplies.

Maybe he was trying to please too many people at the same time. No way is gas transiting via Russia going to be an attractive alternative to Russian gas going via Russia, which is what the EU is looking for.

Unless of course Russia suddenly decides to implement the Energy Charter Treaty and/or allow third party access to the transit pipelines in accordance with EU directives. Doesn't sound like a scenario that would stop the EU trying to diversify.

Whose is the provocation?

Now it seems that the Russians have ships of the coast, reinforcements of soldiers in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.  And to cap it all the march of Nashi (Russian hooligans sponsored by Putin in the past) on the route Moscow-Tskhinvali-Tbilisi has reached Tskhinvali, and intends to march on Tbilisi without Georgian visas so they can create their own demonstration. Read about it here

Entirely unconnected with that (we are told),  NATO intends to hold its own exercises in Georgia in May and June, raising protests all the way up to Medvedev.  Who cares that these exercises were planned 3 years ago?

While both Moscow and the Georgian Opposition want regime change, the Georgian Opposition will never win if it is backed by Moscow.  But it is not going to back down. 

Earlier it was clear that in Georgia no one will back down and the protests will go on till someone does something silly.  But who would have expected it to be NATO?

A galaxy of talent?

That's what Edward Lucas has to say here.

The Georgian opposition has several heavyweight ex-allies of Mr Saakashvili. They include a former speaker of parliament, Nino Burjanadze, a former foreign minister, Salome Zourabichvili, and a former ambassador to the United Nations, Irakli Alasania. Even if they squabble, that is a galaxy of talent compared with Moldova.

To me it's more like a black hole than a galaxy of talent. Who can name one policy that the group want to implement when they take power?

Protest updates

Over the weekend, the protests reduced in size with Sunday's assembly called off to allow people to go to church for Palm Sunday.  No announcements have yet been made about the arrangements for Easter, coming up this weekend.

The size of the protests revived on Monday getting up to 20,000 again, but numbers have been falling since.  The organisers are now dispersing the demos to the residence of the President and the Public Broadcaster, where the emphasis seems mainly on blocking the roads and causing traffic chaos.  Small numbers of demonstrators are camping outside.  There are also supposed to be copies of Cell No 5" being established in various places round the city, but I don't suppose they will be as entertaining as the TV one.

We went past the demo opposite the Parliament at around 10pm last night.  There was still a crowd listening to someone speaking on the rostrum.

People are getting fed up with the traffic chaos, and so far the demonstrators haven't gained any real concessions.  Offers of dialogue were rejected unless it took place in public on TV, in which case one can predict a slanging match.

No alternative ideas are emerging either, due to the lack of any debate about future policies.

The only surprise (to me at least) was that Saakashvili proposed direct elections for mayors.  Whilst this does not offer much, it does allow a suitable political rival to emerge as Mayor of Tbilisi, with rather a big platform to speak from.  But that has been turned down too.

Neither the Russians nor Saakashvili are moving, thank goodness.

Finally some humour from the front lines here and here

* the brother of one of the opposition leaders has turned himself into a one man reality TV show discussing politics and entertaining visitors in his cell.

It is also reported that after Easter the protests will spread outside Tbilisi.

Georgia updates on Twitter

You can now get updates on the situation in Georgia from Twitter @CivilGe as well as from www.civil.ge. They arrive on Twitter before the website. Latest news: Opposition leaders said up to 50 unknown men with batons ‘raided’ and ‘damaged’ equipment in opp. press center outside parliament.

Updates on the demonstrations

There was a second attack on demonstrators on Friday night reported here

From Reuters via twitter. Up to 5,000 Georgians rallied Saturday against President Mikheil Saakashvili, a sharp drop in numbers for the third day of an opposition street campaign to demand his resignation.

They turned out in the capital Tbilisi under cold grey skies, blocking traffic in front of the parliament, the office of the president and public broadcaster.

From this: Pressure is growing on Georgia's president as the opposition is threatening civil disobedience. On Friday, protesters gathered near his residence, pelting it with carrots and cabbage, and calling him "a rabbit." 

Twitter updates

My Twitter updates now in a widget on the side panel.

April 9 Demonstration, Tbilisi

Apologies for anyone who was hoping for live blogging yesterday, I was teaching myself Twitter (@varske).  Although it was a public holiday, I had my Easter holiday early and so needed to catch up with some work.  So although we watched the TV to see what was happening, our Georgian colleagues were on holiday too, so nobody was available to translate.  So I was reading www.civil.ge and seeing who else was on twitter locally (#tbilisi).  There were only a very few twitterers, including the government (@govtofgeorgia), though it soon got bored.

The end result was the day passed peacefully with about 40-50,000 people demonstrating.  Gachecheladze and Alasania were cheered, Burjanadze was booed.  There were complaints about the lack of broadcasting of the demonstration live on TV, although there were clips every hour.   

At the end of the day, the Opposition gave Saakashvili 24 hours to resign.  It doesn't seem very likely that he would do so. 

For me the most sinister part was the information that closed circuit cameras installed along Rustaveli were being monitored by the police.  On the other hand, it's no different from the average British shopping centre on an ordinary day, where it's not even the police doing the monitoring. 

Our local staff came in this morning with reports that the Opposition was really badly funded compared with previously (from Patarkatsishvili), whereas the Government was really well organised.  The Opposition had only paper banners, no free food was provided to keep people there, whereas the government had rounded up a load of taxis and paid them to take people away. 

The police were only bystanding or inside important buildings and had instructions only to take action if the demonstrators tried to enter the buildings and take them over, which didn't happen.

It seems it was a fun day, but the Opposition did not impress anyone with a coherent plan to take over.  Nor did Saakashvili impress people with his offer to the Opposition to discuss and improve the Election Code.  It's not enough to improve transparency and debate over policies, which is really needed.  There needs to be more debate in the press and TV and Parliament.

"Cell no 5"  a satirical program which is popular, claimed last night that Saakashvili actually spent the day on holiday and went to Sighnaghi, (see my post here) disgusting some people who claimed he showed contempt for the people demonstrating.

End of communism means the end of O2 omissions?

In cafebabel here, you can find this interesting statement.

The Bulgarian electrical energy system is based on the communist model, which does not meet EU requirements: a state controlled market, lack of innovation, high O2 omissions and low energy efficiency (between two and eight times lower than the European average).

I wasn't sure exactly what to make of:

• a state controlled market (er, apart from the oxymoron,  isn't that what Sarkozy and the G20 are planning for the financial sector)
• high O2 omissions (omitting O2 would have been fatal for communism, but it was pretty good at emitting CO2 as well).