By Gwynne Dyer, Contributor"By his resignation, he avoided spilling blood in the country," said Mikhail Saakashvili, the opposition leader who finally ended President Eduard Shevardnadze's 30-year career as the boss of Georgia on Sunday. Twelve years after the death of the old Soviet Union, the westernmost of the three Transcaucasian republics has at last shaken off the grip of the old Communist Mafia. With Armenia already well into its post-Communist era, this leaves only Azerbaijan to go. That may be trickier, however, for Azerbaijan is where the oil is.
A lot of the credit for the peaceful transition in Georgia must go to the disciplined crowds who protested in front of the parliament buildings in Tbilisi every day since the rigged elections on 2 November, and to the soldiers and police who made it clear that they would not open fire on the people to defend Shevardnadze's position. But the United States is also due some credit for finally calling time on the old scoundrel, for its condemnation of Shevardnadze's shameless manipulation of the parliamentary election was unusually blunt.
"The elections do not accurately reflect the will of the Georgian people," said US State Department spokesman Adam Ereli, "but instead reflect massive vote fraud in Ajaria and other Georgian regions. Specifically the parallel vote tally and exit polling conducted by reputable independent organisations differ significantly from the results released by the Central Election Committee and these discrepancies in our view reveal an extensive manipulation of the vote count."
TRANSCAUCASIAN REPUBLICS
For Washington, policy towards the Transcaucasian republics (and the other ex-Soviet republics east of the Caspian Sea) is driven by three considerations. Access to the vast new oil reserves in the region and ensuring that the vital pipelines pass through friendly countries is paramount. Enlisting the aid of these countries in the 'war on terror' is also a high priority. And democracy would be nice, other things being equal.
In Georgia, happily, other things are more or less equal. Indeed, Shevardnadze, far from being a guarantee of stability, had become a seriously destabilising influence, for under his rule Georgia, once the most prosperous of all the fifteen Soviet republics, has descended into desperate poverty and decay while a sleek minority grew rich amid the ruins. Georgians were furious at the corruption all around them, but Shevardnadze did nothing to curb it, for distributing favours and privileges to his supporters, and above all to his own clan, was how he kept himself in power.
It was how Shevardnadze originally rose to power as the head of the Georgian Communist Party in 1972. Indeed, it was how almost all of the Party potentates in the non-European parts of the old Soviet Union really secured their power: behind the facade of a modern totalitarian state, they built their local political machines on patronage and clan loyalties. .
In 1992 all three Transcaucasian republics emerged from Soviet rule, but their old Communist Party bosses were soon back in power, now freed of the old Soviet-era restraints. All three countries went into social and economic free-fall, experiencing levels of corruption, poverty and violence that they could not have imagined in the old days. And now, perhaps, they are starting to recover.
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
