Regardless of who will win the parliamentary elections, scheduled for October 1, they will head a long list of the most controversial in the history of Georgia. The incredible tension, which led to a split in all social and sociological components, including religion and science, culture and sport resulted in the demonstration of video material with sophisticated horrific tortures and abuse of prisoners in one of prisons in Tbilisi. A similar situation, as it turns out, has developed in several other prisons.
Sadism demonstrated on TV, recorded by prisoners could not but exasperate the society already wrought-up and politicized beyond measure. Prisoners and some penal system officials are ready to give evidence as a witness in support of what the camera has presented. According to them, topical officials of the Georgian state are related to the tortures. Apparently, it is worth to consider the Georgian journalist Irma Inashvili staying in Brussels, who has played a significant role in demonstrating the "prison material". She said the opposition before the exhibition of the "film" lost the vote, but now has become a favorite, and it is most importantly to prevent serious errors to prevent the initiative from passing to the authorities. Under the pretext of excessive tension, the authorities may cancel the elections till the best time for them. However, in such an assessment there is a risk to make a mistake.
Inashvili is absolutely right in the fact that before the video footage horrifying the entire country, the electoral outcome, with all ambiguity, still seemed predetermined, no matter how flaunted everyone of them – the leader of the ruling United National Movement, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, and the leader of the Georgian Dream coalition, billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili.
In spite of significant consolidation of the regime opponents, the Georgian Dream could obviously expect about 30% of deputy seats, the United National Movement - almost 50%, the other 20% would be equally distributed between majoritarians, 1 or 2 parties that made it through the minimum barrier. It's hard to say how it will now be. The authorities are cornered, and on October 1, they will fight to death, clinging to each voice. If before they were threatened at most by political demise, this time the opposition leaders also promise them the great account. And the things started happening.
In two days alone, on a charge of various offences, more than 20 activists of the Georgian Dream were put behind bars for short periods of time. They are generally intermediaries between the leaders of the coalition and the community. In other words, the authorities for the remaining days until the election have simply sidelined coordinators of the Georgian Dream. As to other activists, the force was used – attacks by masked men armed with clubs have become of systemic nature, and Georgian television news programs can't go without showing ambulance, bound up heads, broken faces.
Some confusion of the leaders of Saakashvili's party after showing the prison horrors did not last long. In as little as 2-3 days, they returned to the aggressive rhetoric and are ready to turn from the accused into accusers. Georgia has also heard about the Russian money, for which tortures in prisons had been allegedly ordered, and about revenge cherished by the criminal circles ousted from the country by the revolutionary power, and about the political opponents' desire to return from the past, and make the country itself come back in the past.
But here I want to ask: Georgia's past are 20-30 thousands of students who took to the streets to protest against the violence and demanding to punish the perpetrators of penal tyranny, aren't it? Normally, quite to the contrary means Georgia's future. The future that on October 1 will be elected by the parliament and that is already able to form the political experience. And it will be difficult to decide.
In this regard, I would like to cite the political analyst Gia Nodia, who was once closely connected with government circles. On his Facebook page, he said to the effect that in any normal country after a prison scandal not only 1 or 2 ministers would leave the political arena, and then under public pressure, but the entire government led by the president would do so. And Georgia's double misfortune is that the alternative to the government is Bidzina Ivanishvili.
In recent days, the political analyst's statement has found some support. Microbuses transporting the United National Movement supporters were attacked. As the sufferers said, they were attacked by people from the Georgian Dream. The authorities promise to demonstrate irrefutable video evidence of "Ivanishvili's seamy side". Georgian TV channels showed hidden camera recordings of how the Georgian Dream members try to bribe officials and police of various levels. And among the "traders" is Ivanishvili's nephew. The main oppositionist has called an incident with his relative undeserving of attention so far as he is not a serious person, a fibber, etc. His spokesperson tries to defend himself against other incidents, saying the authorities organize provocations themselves.
Nevertheless, all of these incidents raise questions. The one, for example, concerns why Ivanishvili is so slighting towards a number of political parties, with which he refuses point-blank to cooperate and which he calls the ruling party's satellites. Another riddle for the Georgian society – why doesn't the Georgian Dream's leader like the Kakha Kukava's Free Georgia that has removed in his favor several of its majoritarian candidates? So far Ivanishvili has reacted peculiarly to the Free Georgia members' political generosity: their candidate would not pass.
How it will all happen – we have not to wait long. Some experts believe that on October 1, it will not be quite the end of it, and the country will face a crunch period. To confirm the correctness of their words, they refer to the CEC decision to restrict the free work of journalists on the election day to 10 minutes from the time of the polling stations opening. All the rest of the time, up to the end of voting, it will be allowed taking pictures and video filming with a large number of reservations that devalues the work. It is not hard to guess who needs these restrictions.
