Georgia From National Awakening to Rose Revolution: Delayed Transition in the Former Soviet Union by Jonathan Wheatley

Author:Jonathan Wheatley [Wheatley, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780754645030
Google: dGqLAAAAMAAJ
Goodreads: 3629659
Publisher: Ashgate
Published: 2005-01-15T09:29:11+00:00

Contestation Between Centres of Power

In Georgia during the period in question there was a significant degree of competition for political and economic power. However, much of this competition went on ‘behind the scenes’. Formal political parties remained peripheral to this power struggle and, unlike the sort of competition that goes on in a democracy, Georgian citizens played little or no role in it. Competition in Georgia involved a struggle for power and/or resources between ‘informal centres’. It is the task of this section to explain the issues involved and the forms that this competition took.

At the beginning of the period we are examining (i.e. in 1996 and early 1997) there was a relatively harmonious relationship between the various centres of power mentioned above. However, over time two main lines of conflict developed: first between Aslan Abashidze’s Adjaran elite and some of the other groups, and second between the ‘reformers’ group and virtually all the others. The conflicts, at one level, involved policy contestation, while at another, probably more fundamental level they involved access to executive power and resources.

After the 1995 elections, Abashidze’s Union of Democratic Revival and the CUG together formed the majority in Parliament. Two parliamentary committees were chaired by Revival members. This left the National Democratic Party (see Chapter 4) as the largest party in the parliamentary minority or opposition. In September 1996, Revival and the CUG formed a joint bloc in elections to the Surpreme Council of Adjara and won 76 out of 80 seats.

In the summer of 1997, two events occurred that led to tension between Tbilisi and Batumi. First, in the Organic Law on Self-Government and Administration that was being drafted, it was envisaged that the President would appoint all gamgebelis, including those in Adjara, while previously it was Abashidze who had appointed the gamgebelis in his region. This dispute was eventually resolved by means of a compromise and the final draft of the law stated that the ‘relevant higher representative body’ (i.e. the Adjaran Supreme Council) would appoint the gamgebelis in consultation with the President. In practice, this meant that Abashidze continued to appoint them.

The second event to occur was a split in the Revival parliamentary faction. In July 1997, eight members broke away from this faction and in September (together with two other deputies) formed their own faction, Mamuli, which immediately positioned itself close to the CUG. This invoked the suspicion that the CUG had offered the rebels important positions within the party.58 Particularly unpalatable for Aslan Abashidze was the fact that Adjara’s one deputy chairman of Parliament, Eduard Surmanidze, as well as the chairman of one of the parliamentary committees, belonged to the ‘deserters’.59 Surmanidze immediately struck up a close relationship with the reform-minded wing of the CUG (he later became Secretary General of the party), and the CUG resisted Abashidze’s calls for Surmanidze to be dismissed as deputy chairman.

Thus the Adjaran elite began to view the CUG, and especially its ‘reformist wing’, with increasing suspicion. In October 1997, Abashidze even accused Zurab Zhvania of being a ‘terrorist’ and of plotting to kill him.

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