TOPIC OF THE WEEK: Georgian authorities score an important symbolic victory
The year starts exactly as it ended, with Georgia occupying our minds, as the outgoing President surrendered much more easily than anticipated despite promising to offer stiffer resistance to those (Georgian Dream) who were barely hiding their desire to see her gone, and the new President was inaugurated on Dec 29th.
I present the stronger (in my view) case for further normalization of the political backdrop as I argue that Georgian Dream has won a key symbolic victory in seeing Salome Zurabishvili off in a peaceful manner (which was not guaranteed). Moreover, I argue that the West has reacted in a relatively mild manner to the unfolding events and stress, in particular, the often ignored, yet very important, modus operandi of the key regional players, including Azerbaijan, Turkey and Armenia, all of which have recognized both the Oct Parliamentary Elections and the newly elected President.
I also argue the weaker (in my view) case for deepening the Constitutional crisis, which must necessarily depend on a much more active Western approach to supporting the opposition. There are, in fact, calls for such an approach in American analytical circles that claim that US foreign policy in the region is "dangerously outdated".
My view on the political events in Georgia has been the same since the very start, and none of what has happened recently has forced me to reconsider. The larger Georgian society feels more sympathetic to the kind the of vision offered by Georgian Dream, i.e., a vision that strives to combine moderately pro-Western and conservative views with the desire not to antagonize Russia (or China, for that matter). The problem, of course, is that these two building blocks may not be fully consistent, despite the ruling party's genuine efforts to find ways to make them so.
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