Translated material
Democracy as it is
October 9: President Mikhail Saakashvili and the leader of the parliamentary majority of Bidzin Ivanishvili met in Tbilisi
Democracy as it is. The results of the parliamentary elections in Georgia were a sensation. The opposition block of the billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili “Georgian Dream” received 83 mandates (54.85%) in the 150-seater Georgian parliament. The party of power, the “single national movement” by Mikhail Saakashvili, lost both according to party lists and in majority districts and remained in parliament in the minority with 67 mandates (40.43%). Why did Saakashvili lose - The New Times asked people on the streets and squares 
The day after the elections, that is, exactly the next day, cars on Rustaveli Avenue began to drive differently. Where two days ago it was impossible to cross the oncoming lane and turn left, suddenly it became possible. Not a single patrol (GAI Saakashvili was eliminated back in 2004), which had previously arisen here and there, it was not visible per kilometer. This road freemen, which was previously fined, which began in the evening after the elections, when Tbilisi was buzzing and rushed with blue flags of the “Georgian Dream”, continued day, evening, and the next day. “The police also voted for Bizzo,” the taxi driver explained. Three days later, branches of two banks and several apartments were robbed in Tbilisi, which was not for several years. Help - one, Ivanishvili, not yet a prime minister, the other, Saakashvili, already a lame duck - immediately made itself felt. 
Reforms and fate
It was almost impossible to find a person in Tbilisi, who would give his vote for the party in power. And Tbilisi is almost a quarter of a population of 4.5 million Georgia. About the same story in a number of other cities (and this is almost 25% of the population) - opposition cable channels (see map) came here, unlike the villages). 
That is, of course, Saakashvili’s supporters were, and not only among the administration officials (although they voted differently in the ministries), but also among the Office Plankton, especially in the age group of 20-30 years. And yet there was an absolute minority. For example, taxi drivers, for the most part, are people under and in fifty, who had some kind of business during the time of President Shevardnadze: out of ten surveyed ten-for Ivanishvili. Cause? "Bidzina will establish relations with Russia - it will be possible to trade again." A maid in a hotel, a woman for forty with two, as she said, with medical diplomas, was sitting with a child for ten years, now they haven’t taken anywhere: “Ivanishvili promised to increase salaries and pensions”: Maya (name changed) salaries in the euro - € 200, and utility payments - € 150. Maya is sure: the billionaire Ivanishvili somehow share with her and his other billions. Dato, in the past, the builder, under 60, is now engaged in a private carrier: “I was under the Soviet regime, both the head of the site and the foreman: now I went around 25 construction projects - they don’t take anywhere, everywhere my own. And I have experience. ” And the Dato is not aware that that of his experience is visibly visible with terrible concrete boxes with divergent sutures in Sababurnal, and in Vake, and in other areas of the city. But also 16 out of 20 students of the faculty of business management and the law faculty, which met correspondents of The New Times, from the Free University of Tbilisi, created and led by the associate of Saakashvili, the Minister of Economics in his first government of the reforms Kakha Bendukidze also cast their votes to the Georgian Dream. By the way, all children from prosperous families, almost all parents in business. Or exactly because the parents are in business: “Mom made a haircut to the client, he paid, but did not take the check. The financial police flew immediately: a fine of three thousand Lari, and the haircut was two thousand, ”says the future jurist. This phrase “Financial Police” was somehow pronounced by all people from the business, whom I had to talk with. They pronounced him as a “sword of the Lord”-with horror, looking around and begging that the journalists would not mention the name-families or the sphere of activity. “As soon as the profit appears, they are right there: they collect tribute.” - "Collect in their pocket?" - “No, to the budget. They say: go to court. But it is impossible to win in court. ” So Saakashvili accustoms fellow citizens to pay taxes, which they did not pay. Pay steel. But to hate it too. The second reason why the students voted against Saakashvili is a monstrous story in prison No. 8: on video films published by opposition channels a week before the election, the jailers tortured and raped people. “You have raped in Kazan with bottles - did it go a lot on the streets? And we have a hundred thousand, ”says Kakha Bendukidze. - And especially - young guys: how the government could allow this to be done in prisons with people, they ask. You and I - we, perhaps, were also indignant, but would not be surprised: torture in prison and during the USSR and after - almost the norm. And for them it is not the norm, and this is one of the main achievements of these eight years, ”says Bendukidze. 
Even for Ivanishvili, the creative intelligentsia voted in abundance: they were publicly called by the legendary actor Otar Megvinetuhuzi, who played the date of Tutashhia, and the no less legendary director Rezo Gabriadze: Ivanishvili repaired the theater, gave the cinema, paid for salaries. Therefore, all the professors of the Tbilisi State University, which were known to the author, also voted for him, who lost their rooms and status and sent to a meager pension, because their courses and knowledge acquired back in the USSR were not needed. And entire departments and faculties too. And tutoring, Blat Blat, with the introduction of a standardized exam in Georgia (our USE), which is printed exclusively in London to steal and sell it in advance - it turned out to be unnecessary. “My brother’s son,” says Moscow Georgian Amiran, whose relatives live in Batumi, scored 82 points at the university for free. And those who received less than 80 points pay half the cost of training, who are even less. And before they paid everything: for admission, for exams, for a diploma. ”
They voted for the “Georgian Dream” and the judges, and their assistants, the secretaries of the courts, and the bailiffs dismissed in many Saakashvili. Nino (the name was changed) was the pride of parents living in the village in the mountainous Heevsuretia: not only is the beauty, she graduated from a law university, worked as an assistant judge, then she herself became a judge. The author was the last time she was visiting in 2006: two connected three indoor apartments (her husband, two daughters, one married right there), a special large hall-like a store of antiques, where guests are scheduled: vases of different sizes, enormous and smaller, painted and inlaid by mother of pearl, silver, mash, murmur cabinets, service cabinets, service-service-service-service Beauty. And all for the salary of the judge.
Specialists, who had gone in the 1990s, voted for the “dream” and specialists, who left in the 1990s to lead the markets or intermediary offices that were driving out of Russia to Georgia to the wagons of fuel oils and gasoline and the devil knows what else: salaries did not pay, survived, fed families nearby and together with the bandits. Then there was a revolution, which was joyfully supported. Then, in 2006, financial inspectors came to the doctor of legal sciences of Gel (name), calculated how many areas on his market were rented out, how much money was supposed to collect, how much taxes to pay to the budget. They gave two years conditionally and a fine of a million Lary. Well, of course, the families and relatives of those almost 25 thousand voted for the “Georgian Dream” that are sitting from the country's prisons. In Tbilisi, now you can leave the car open - no one will take anything. You can walk calmly at night, which was not before. Drug addicts almost disappeared from the gateway, while in the early 2000s Rustaveli Avenue was strewn with syringes. Now sit. And relatives wear programs and curse Saakashvili. And they can be understood.
Tired
Nico, a guide, 35 years old, has his own little business of the production of blinds, graduated from a sports institute, a massage therapist by profession: “I can’t get a job: you need young people everywhere - up to 30, with education it is better than foreign and free knowledge of foreign languages.” “When the Soviet Union ended, I was a teenager,” he says, “and these years I spent on the street. Because even in the winter it was warmer on the street: there was neither gas nor electricity in the apartment. On the street they were warmed up by the bonfires, and one could intercept something to eat from someone. From the night, it took the line at the bakery. There were five thousand people in line: the problem was not only to take bread - for money, the problem was how to endure it: there were thousands of the same hungry people outside the gates of the plant. ” "
It was almost impossible to find a person in Tbilisi, who would vote for the party in power. And Tbilisi is almost a quarter of a population of 4.5 million Georgia
“Nico also voted against Saakashvili. Firstly, I was tired, it doesn’t get off the screens.“ The power should change, ”Nico says confidently. And for the first time in recent years, a strong opposition leader appeared, which managed to combine the opposition. Secondly,“ elite corruption ”said.“ Elite ”-this means that the officials do not take in the middle of the passport (now it is a couple of days-a couple of days-a couple of days-a couple of days-a couple of days-a couple of days And in any area, I paid to the cashier-I received it; I received a business of ten minutes, and no bribes, and upstairs, he was only convinced of his own? Kzerashvili, in the past, the Minister of Defense of Georgia. - Kakha Bendukidze retorts.
The price of "their" media
The number of rumors walking in Tbilisi is going through. Nico, for example, as a fact said that a fire occurred in the bank that belonged to the government on the eve of the election. “They notice traces,” he said confidently. “In order to erase the server, you need to press the button, and that’s it. Why a fire for this? " - laughs Bendukidze. Another rumor: Saakashvili sent his money with two steamers to Turkey. “Why hire a steamer, even two, if the money from the account to the offshore is transferred again by pressing the button?” - says the wise and all -knowing Kakha. The abundance of rumors is surprising, given that there are three by the state or close to it by the structures of the meter channel and three cable - opposition, a bunch of newspapers. Newspapers, by the way, all as one went on elections day with terrible anti -government articles and pictures. In May, Ivanishvili opened his channel - TV 9. It also helps the maestro cable channel. However, the OSCE in her report, published on September 24, "expressed special concern to the media situation in Georgia." Translated to publicly available: Empage channels “Water” Ivanishvili, and opposition - Saakashvili. With the only difference - meter, close to the state, channels spread throughout the territory of Georgia, and cable, opposition falls only into those houses where there are “plates”. “Yes, we have censorship,” a familiar journalist from the state “Rustavi-2” told the author. - But I think this is correct: it guarantees stability. If we talked about everything that was happening in the government, about all scandals, about how we dispersed the demonstration in 2011 with two corpses abandoned on the roof-they allegedly killed them with electricity, how they made “Russian spies” colleagues, knocking them out in prison ** recently one of the “spies”, the photojournalist of George Abdaladze told in detail the history of his “recognition” to foreign journalists. A number of human rights groups, including Transparenation International Georgia, demanded an independent investigation., Then a civil war could have begun at all. We have already experienced three wars - we no longer need, ”the colleague convinced. Only there would be no war - it is repeated constantly here.
As often happens, feeding some media and creating problems with others, the Georgian authorities were in an information vacuum. People from the presidential office with whom they managed to talk were completely convinced: yes, Tbilisi against the party of power, but the rural Georgia would vote Saakashvili and his “unified national movement”: the president was tired of the country, he opened something all the time, promised a lot. Even Bendukidze assured the author that, having lost on party lists (“The prison scandal deprived us of the constitutional majority in parliament, but the majority or so we will have,” he said two days before the elections), the party of power will make mandates at the expense of majority districts: out of 73, Ivanishvili would be at the best case, he thought. As is now well known, the Georgian Dream block scored two and a half times more - it has 38 single -mandate. By the way, foreign observers noted that the elections in Georgia were clean, with a minimum number of violations (the numbers are ridiculous for us: 2 attempts to falsify, 5 attempts to vote in other people's ballots, in one village the results were canceled in five polling stations), which did not affect the final result, the opposition also recognized.
What next *
Bidzina Ivanishvili has already stated that Saakashvili should resign, and he would not take anyone from his current government (see interview with Ivanishvili on page 40). Then, however, under the pressure of American advisers, they say in Tbilisi, worked back: ready to cooperate. The United States annually provides assistance in the amount of $ 400 million. Strictly speaking, Saakashvili can still appoint its prime minister: amendments to the Georgian Constitution, according to which Georgia passes to the parliamentary form of government, when the government forms the party of the winning majority, and the premiere becomes the first person of the state, entering into force only in October 2013, after the election of a new president. Saakashvili cannot be elected anymore, and it is obvious that he should not be the prime minister in the current situation of political forces. However, he made a beautiful and worthy gesture: he said that Ivanishvili would offer the post of head of government and he will also form the office: “This is the right of the party of the parliamentary majority.” Theoretically, the president can after six months and dissolve the parliament, but “Saakashvili has no tools now to go for it,” Bidzina Ivanishvili said confidently in an interview with The New Times. Can the situation in Georgia return to the one that was in the early 2000s with their wild corruption and lawlessness? Maybe analysts say. As it was possible in the “partially free”, according to the qualification of Freedom Forum, Georgia to receive the result necessary for the party and Saakashvili. So, as they received it in Russia in 1996. And further - always. And with the consequences known today.