Uncertain Democracy. Lincoln A. Mitchell
and more radical edge, preferring to make more cautious and calculated decisions. Politics did not come easily to him, and he never seemed to be fully comfortable with the machinations and maneuverings essential for a good leader of a political party.
The line between CUG and the opposition parties was becoming murky in Georgia by 2001 and 2002, as many Georgians initially found it difficult to believe Shevardnadze’s top protégés were now leading many of the major opposition parties. Nonetheless, as the spring 2002 local elections approached, the new party system was more firmly in place. Of the three parties in parliament, the two pro-government parties were Revival and the CUG. While the CUG had begun to fracture and weaken, Revival was still unified in support of Abashidze’s authoritarian regime in Ajara, but its coalition partners from the 1999 election, most notably the Traditionalist Party, had broken off and informally become part of the opposition. The Industrialist Party remained unified, continuing to be a weak opposition voice but a frequent supporter of the CUG.
The opposition parties were divided between those who had never been part of the CUG, notably the Labor Party, a left-leaning party whose platform called for government spending on programs to help Georgia’s poorest voters. Labor frequently touted its credentials as never having been part of the CUG. The second group was the the breakaway factions/parties that had once been part of the CUG. These included the NM, UD, and New Rights. There were numerous smaller parties that had no representation in the 1999 parliament and were desperately trying to remain relevant. The most prominent of these were the National Democratic Party (NDP) and the People’s Party, both of which had been active in the movement for Georgian independence in the late 1980s, but by the beginning of the new millennium were no longer very relevant in Georgia.14
A few other aspects of the political party system were important as well. First, other than a social-democratic position taken on economic and social issues by the Labor Party, ideology was not very relevant in partisan differences. Most parties claimed to be center-right and to support market reforms, but rarely fleshed that position out or even demonstrated a clear awareness of what the term “center right” meant.
Instead, the issue that defined this party system was a party’s position relative to Shevardnadze. Moreover, as time passed and the president grew less popular, each party, other than the CUG, claimed to be the most genuine and strongest in its opposition. By 2003, the phrase “we are the only real opposition party in Georgia” was the boast of virtually every non-CUG party. Revival and the Industrialists based this claim on the fact that they had won seats in parliament independently of the CUG; Labor on having run on an aggressive anti-CUG platform in 1999 and been prevented from taking its rightful seats due to CUG election fraud. The NM and UD based their claim on having visibly broken with CUG leadership and by using their seats in parliament to form an anti-government group in that body. When parties were not asserting their reasons for being the only true opposition, they were often attacking the opposition credentials of the other parties.
There was not a lot at stake in the local elections of 2002 because most power in Georgia was centralized, but the balloting was viewed by many as a test for several of the newly formed parties and a preview of the 2003 parliamentary elections. These local elections were held in towns, cities, and rayons around the country, including a party list election for the Tbilisi city council. The voting was not altogether free and fair, but because there was so little at stake it was more so than either of the recent national elections. The three big winners were the New Rights, who won more seats nationwide than any other party, although this was in substantial part due to vote buying and bribery; the Labor Party, whose strong anti-Shevardnadze message resonated throughout Georgia; and the National Movement, which won seats throughout the country and, running under the slogan “Tbilisi without Shevardnadze” won a plurality of seats on the Tbilisi city council. The National Movement and Labor were able to form a majority on the city council, making Saakashvili the speaker of that body, a very visible position in Georgia. Because Tbilisi’s mayor was not directly elected but appointed by the president, Saakashvili was the highest ranking elected official in Tbilisi.15 He used this position for great political and symbolic gain. Zhvania’s United Democrats got a late start in these elections as the details of the split between Zhvania and the CUG took some time to resolve, but Zhvania’s party did respectably, winning a handful of seats throughout the country and in Tbilisi. Thus, the political environment had begun to take on more clarity as the parliamentary elections of 2003 approached.
Defining the Shevardnadze Regime
Categorizing Shevardnadze’s Georgia as a particular type of regime is a complex task. Examining Shevardnadze’s rule in this way, however, is important because this process helps clarify the Rose Revolution. For example, to determine the extent to which the Rose Revolution was a democratic breakthrough, or in fact a revolution, depends substantially on how the regime that preceded it is understood. The relevance of the Rose Revolution as a model to other countries struggling for expanded democracy also depends on how comparable the Shevardnadze regime is to other nondemocratic regimes.
The combination of a substantial amount of freedom, a weak state, restricted political competition, extensive corruption, powerful non-state actors, fraudulent elections, a strong presidency but a visible legislature—all of which characterized Shevardnadze’s Georgia—was unusual. While it is clear that Georgia during this period was neither democratic nor authoritarian, it is not clear whether it was in transition or was some kind of consolidated semidemocratic regime. If one views it as being in transition, it is equally unclear whether it was a period of transition to democracy or part of a lengthy transition, which began in the late 1980s, away from the Soviet system.
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