Georgia is waiting for a billionaire savior

Author - special correspondent of Kommersant Publishing House Olga Allenova

A mass protest took place in Georgia, at which billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, who led the opposition last fall, spoke for the first time. The opposition called the rally on Freedom Square the start of the election campaign, which will end in October this year.

This is perhaps the most important campaign in Georgia over the past 10 years - Mikheil Saakashvili leaves the presidency in 2013, and from the same year, according to a new law, the President of Georgia is deprived of all power, and the Prime Minister is given additional powers. The prime minister is approved by parliament. Thus, both the country’s domestic policy and foreign policy depend on parliamentary elections.

This rally had two key phrases: “He got it” (about Mikheil Saakashvili) and “To be or not to be” (about Georgia). The first phrase was said by almost everyone who came to the opposition rally, the second by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, when he came to the podium and began his speech about the future of Georgia. He spoke about social inequality and poverty in which the majority of Georgian citizens live, about unemployment, about injustice, about the fact that the authorities do not think about ordinary people, and that he has a program that will eliminate all of these problems. The opposition leader did not dwell on the program, saying only that it would make it possible to “employ everyone and provide everyone with a decent life.”

These promises were enough for the opposition public - the billionaire was greeted with such applause that Mikheil Saakashvili had probably never dreamed of.

The most mysterious Georgian politician, the leader of the Georgian Dream coalition, remained in the shadows until last fall: he lived in his village in the Sachkhere region of Georgia or in a gray glass house in Tbilisi, on a mountainside, with its own helipad, almost opposite the presidential residence. The billionaire communicated only with Mikheil Saakashvili and the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Vano Merabishvili. He financed the Georgian police and army, built churches, maintained his entire Sachkhere district, distributed money to people's artists and professors, whose authority the new government did not want to recognize.

Last fall, the billionaire harshly criticized the authorities and announced that he was going into politics. This had the effect of a bomb exploding - a man with a multi-billion dollar fortune, and even with an impeccable reputation, was a serious competitor to the authorities, who worked hard, built a lot, but became increasingly unpopular due to harsh reforms.

Over the past few months, Ivanishvili’s name has not left the pages of local newspapers, television news has been dedicated to him, he has been discussed in markets and in offices. He created the Georgian Dream party, and this immediately became a symbol: who in Georgia does not dream of becoming Bidzina Ivanishvili? True, in the billionaire’s interpretation, the “Georgian Dream” meant “a decent life,” which the voter also liked. He immediately promised that he would invest $1 billion in agriculture (a little later it turned out that this was not exactly gratuitous assistance, but low-interest loans), that he would provide all citizens with free health insurance and increase pensions for pensioners to 220 lari (about $130).

A rumor has also spread around Tbilisi that Ivanishvili intends to buy the Tbilisi electricity distribution networks "Telasi" so that all residents of the capital will pay several times less for electricity. High tariffs for utilities, high taxes and inflation are what worries even non-poor residents of the capital. And those who were left without work as a result of the reforms fiercely hate the government, which builds roads, bridges, fountains and entire neighborhoods, but “does not care about ordinary people.”

“Yes, our fountains are beautiful, and so are our facades,” says Tbilisi resident Diana. “But this is the beauty of a dead man—there is devastation inside the houses, and there is hatred in people’s souls.” The authorities have recently been trying to remind citizens that 10 years ago there was not even electricity in the country, and Tbilisi sat for many hours without electricity, but now electricity is supplied uninterruptedly - it has just become more expensive. “I don’t need his light,” Diana answers sharply, “we’d ​​rather sit without light, but with work!”

Social instability and the growth of the ratings of the opposition, which promises to eliminate this instability, led to the fact that the authorities also made concessions: starting from the fall of this year, pensions are increased to 220 lari, all pensioners, children under 6 years of age and other socially vulnerable groups of the population receive insurance. The speech of Mikheil Saakashvili, who opened the new parliament building in Kutaisi on Saturday, was socially oriented: he promised that now the government will pay even more attention to the poor, that it will solve the problem of unemployment, and also improve the quality of life in the regions - precisely in order to improve regional policy government agencies are being moved from Tbilisi to other large cities, Kutaisi and Batumi.

Mikheil Saakashvili has recently been leading a very active campaign, the goal of which is to show voters that he has done more than anyone before him. He even compared himself to Prometheus, giving himself to people.

But yesterday's rally in Tbilisi showed that Saakashvili's attempts to please the opposition were not entirely successful - according to various sources, from 40 to 70 thousand people came to the rally in Freedom Square. There has not been such a large-scale protest here for many years. However, experts believe that the situation in the regions is different - Tbilisi has always been a very oppositional city. Even government officials admit that in Tbilisi the rating of Bidzina Ivanishvili’s party is more than 40%, although in the regions, in their opinion, it is no higher than 10%. The opposition claims that the ratings of the party in power and Ivanishvili are similar - approximately 40% each.

This dispute may be resolved as early as June 7 - on this day the opposition has planned a protest rally in Kutaisi, where it intends to begin its regional election campaign. This is a symbolic and bold gesture - on May 26, for the first time in the history of independent Georgia, a military parade was held not in Tbilisi, but in Kutaisi. Thus, Mikheil Saakashvili emphasized the importance of the regions and made it clear to the opposition that the fate of the country is not being decided in Tbilisi alone.