Why do we, Georgians, need our own country? What is the idea of a state? In this collective family, as in our own ones, we need a home, yard, roof and locker in order to live lives to our liking That is why we want the Georgian state. A question “where is a better place to live” is rhetoric from economic standpoint. What is better, Georgia, your homeland, to be a part of Turkey or Russia but where you are financially independent or to be independent and autonomous in every sense of this word? A lot can be said about this issue; however I would not delve into details.
Georgia has set two main objectives: one is reoccupation and if this does not happen nobody will allow us to live on the rest of our territory; the other objective is to clarify how to live. What should the political setting of the country be? What unites us? Hypothetically, if I have a salary amounting to GEL 1000, you – GEL 100, others – GEL 5 000, how can we stand together? Can the calling of love of Georgia unite us? This can happen under extraordinary situations, but what makes us a whole? What should we do? State is the family of families. As a family cannot be successful without planning, so the country should have its strategy and a plan.
It goes without saying that the biggest strategy is the Constitution – the document that defines the concepts further detailed in specific laws. Both the laws and the Constitution are permanent and mainly this is the strategy. Absence of strategy is a strategy itself. There are certain stages in the above process. The latest document of Georgia, governing our lives, is a document developed by the government – “For Powerful, Democratic and United Georgia.”
Please pay attention, that if we consider unity as one of our main objectives, this program does not include Georgia as a whole. It refers to United Georgia only in the heading. I kindly request you all to read this document: limiting the promises of the government to the reduction of tariffs or what has not been done may target the voters for whom the above was designed. The goal for you should be different.
I would like to ask you to take look once again at this program and detain your attention on some points, for example: are we having economic crisis? Is this cohabitation? Some say – this is, others say – this is not. While drawing up the above document, the authors considered that Georgia was in an economic crisis. Page 9 states that certain measures have to be taken. Increase of export potential of Georgia, development of small and medium enterprises are the guarantees of rescuing the country from the economic crises. It is clear that in October the country was in crises and the government promised to overcome it, did not it? The aspiration to save the country from socio-economic crises, attract investments and so on, which is not accidental, is written out on the page 16 of the document. Hence, when a new political power took the office, it already realized that the country was in an economic crisis. However, it does not explain why the crisis was in October and why it does not exist now. This is the first complain that we might have to the new executive political team. This is the issue of competence. Another problem is an unprecedented sluggishness of the Government and expectation of people.
And now let’s assume that we have the following thesis about the crisis: presently there is an economic crises in Georgia. It was here yesterday and three years ago; it has been having a form of permanent phenomenon since 1991 as long as the economic level that Georgia had in 1989 has not been achieved so far. Hence the situation is generally critical; however, during the period of the crises the downturn of economy stopped in 1996 which was followed by increase, later followed by another downturn in 2009. However, all these downturns and increases are in comparison to 2008 and it should be noted that there was no increase compared to 1989.
The above means that Georgia has been experiencing a 20 year crises that it has not overcome yet. However, this period included some successful years when it had some increase compared to the previous years and I do not mean the quality of increase here. As for the document itself. It is written in an eclectic manner as if we are supporting free market economy on the one hand and interference in the state economy – on the other. Priorities also vary from page to page: if we see agriculture and small entrepreneurship on one page they disappear on another.
The document includes a chapter about health care and social policy but there is nothing about the social policy in it except for the heading. It also refers to the pensions. Here I would like to make my personal statement and say that there is no pension system in Georgia presently. Moreover, list of pensioners does not exist. The program says that accumulative pension system will be developed. Time frames for developing the system have not been specified. If it is supposed to be developed within four years, a year has already passed in cohabitation.
As for the funds, they all go to the budget. Off-budget funds are something that Georgia has already experienced. It facilitates corruption, especially in Georgia since I cannot imagine changing of mentality of Georgians so that they drop the habit of being involved in corruption schemes. We are told that this will not be the budget funds. On the other hand the document says that the source of funding the field of agriculture will be the state budget. Agriculture developing fund having the budget of a GEL billion, should not exist in parallel of the state budget.
What is the program about, where does our money go, etc. – All these questions should be subject to discussions. Now I’m going to pose a rhetoric question – as it became known, there is a program stating that lands should be ploughed and they say that the territory to be ploughed amounts to 200 thousand ha. It’s not a big territory; let’s say later 400 thousand ha. will be ploughed. So what? I think you are active members of our society; can you tell me what should the result be after this? Has anybody heard anything about that? No one knows anything about it. However, if we go deeper, fallow land is better than the ploughed one. That’s why the topics related to publicity and government effectiveness and efficiency is one of the most important challenges we’ve been facing for the period of our being.
We are saying that we should develop a state program;do we know what it should be based or which party ideology should develop it? How should it be developed? First of all we should find out whether we want social, liberal or no setting at all. Hence, it is impossible to achieve the goal if there is no intention… Confusing theses have been introduced to our political market like it was during the period of “Citizen’s Union,” “United National Movement,” “Round Table” and the “Georgian Dream.” None of the above mentioned parties could give the right impulse to people to make the right choice in this political market.
Incorrect information is delivered to Georgian economy and it gets distracted. For example, an official states that he has liberal values, even more, ultra-liberal ones and cannot imagine anything other than the free market. On the other hand, along with making such statements, he sells the property worth of GEL 200 mln for a symbolic price – GEL 1, which means that his actions do not coincide with his impulse. That’s why people get confused: they do not understand how a person can get the property worth of GEL 200 mln for GEL 1 while another person may go to prison for stealing GEL 1.
The practice of giving out these incorrect impulses never ends. When the government tells me that it will plough my land, what kind of impulse it might be? And how have they decided whose land should be ploughed. David said that there are 600 thousand land owners…. Nobody knows whether this number is precise. Maybe it is 700 thousand or 500 thousand. We do not have this information. How do we know it now? Have we clarified which land should be ploughed based on “door to door” principle? I once joked that it should be made based on the“land parcel to land parcel principle.” This is an example of the government’s incorrect impulse; the government interferes with the economic activity and the wrong impulses destroy economy.
In a nutshell, I would like to say that the document does not state anything about the social policy which should be the key point. The Georgian version of the poverty reduction formula exists only in 2 or 3 countries, which have copied from us. Setting and counting poverty scores are purely pre-election trick. I am sure about it as long as I know the authors of this trick; that’s what they came up with: why should we look for money for elections somewhere else? Let uscall it scores and confer them to people who will vote for us at the elections. The worst thing in this is that it completely changes the ideology that we recognized. We want a liberal state while people are trying to find out who is poorer.
Another issue is that we do not want business and government tied to each other, do we? Then let’s take the so-called Partnership Fund – the Fund which is a joint stock company and the Prime Minister chairs its Supervisory Board. The goals of this Partnership Fund under the United National Movement included creation of work places. The new government made amendments to these goals and stated that the aims of the Partnership Fund isto generate profit.It means that our Prime-Minister, a public servant, strives to generate profit for the corporation, the statute of which states that profit should be divided among the board members. It should also be mentioned that the salary fund of the administration of the corporation per month exceeds the salary of 250 teachers taken together.
What shall this concept be based on? What values should govern the national ideology? What is the nationalideology? I still think that the ideology should have orthodox principles, meaning Christian moral in economy. How should we correctly analyze whether anything functions duly in this country?
My colleagues published the first big volume containing only criticism. Let’s go deeper and analyze if the United National Movement has done anything good. Is there anything acceptable in the results yielded from them? Yes, there is. I will now count down. If not what the United National Movement created, collapse of the new government would have long been come. None of the Ministries except for the Judiciary is functioning.
If the Prosecutor’s Office is working, what prevents the Ministry of Economics, Ministry of Labor, Health and Social Affairs to work? Besides, what does the Ministry of Justice has to do with the Labor Code? It is nonsense. Labor Code is the competence of the Ministry of Labor, Health and Social Affairs of Georgia. It develops the law and the Ministry of Justice issues itsexpert opinion….. The Ministry of Justice should not be interested whether working time is defined tobe 8 or 12 hours. Ministry of Justice has to compare it with the Constitution, other laws and make its conclusion that it does not come in confrontation with other legislative acts.
In order to analyze all these, we have to find out what is good. What did the United National Movement create? In the first place, they created the state – the state as a punitive instrument. State – executor. State -disaster. State – unacceptable for a person of any century and era. They just could not think of something worse. There was a time when I was fighting Topadze and Chkhonia saying they would not pay taxes. I was telling them to stop saying this aloud as it was shameful. However, the Government was not strong then.
Everyone was battering the State – from the right or from the left. The State was the most suppressed body. Now the United National Movement created an executor from it. The economy is tailored to that executor. They created tax system, police-state system; they created all the possible punitive systems. All these yielded its economic results. There is no Dutch disease in Georgia. This only happens when money comes from oil and the state gives out pensions, but when the money ends the state won’t be able to give out pensions. Pensions were not given out in Georgia. The government received money after the war. They built the bridge and embezzled half of the money. They did not give this money to the population.
The state made hospitals bankrupt through insurance companies and built hospitals with their money. The ruling party fully freed the state from its social obligations. We need to analyze what was the strong part and where may collapse occur in the nearest future. Our budget is incapable to meet the social obligations that are now prescribed in the budget. Thus, my advice to the new ruling team is to consolidate the public, open debates and tell the people what they will do in the fields of social security, healthcare and education; they should correct their plan, if necessary. In every other case it will go nowhere but lies.
Vertical management remained single-handed. It was the same when Zviad Gamsakhurdia, Eduard Shevardnadze and Mikheil Saakashvili were presidents. Now it is subordinated to two persons; from September a single person will be responsible for this. This is a catastrophe. One person responsible for everything is a problem; that means bad governance and, at the same time, it makes governance costly. All the reforms that started in Georgia are on their third or fifth rounds but none of them have been accomplished. Transitional period has not finished yet in Georgia.
Nana Devdariani: the so-called post-Soviet transformation has not finished yet
Mikheil Jibuti: No, it has not finished yet. In none of the fields. In addition, the Government does not have the sense of succession. They do not have the sense that Mikhail Saakashvili is the successor of Eduard Shevardnadze and Bidzina Ivanishvili is the successor of Saakashvili. They do not have the feeling that if their predecessor did something wrong they are responsible for correcting it. If your former counterpart adopted a bad law and you are implementing it – you are making the same mistake.
Another issue is the cost of government. It is very high for the whole population of Georgia. Governing Georgia does not cost that much. It is also inadmissible when average salary of a public servant exceeds the average salary in business. Salary of a public servant, of a clerk, in the US equals the salary of a kitchen maid. The reason why I go to the US as a public servant is that I know that I will have week-ends there, that I will have bonuses, time when I take retirement, I am guaranteed with the quiet life-style, I am not an adventure lover and like to live a quiet life, andI know that they will not sack me if I do not commit homicide.
If a person wants to make a fortune, there is another option – business, where one has to incur risk though it brings more income. Therefore, if you are an energetic person, you do not choose to work as a public servant. This is there, in the US. What do we have here in Georgia? Good, energetic youth are all absorbed in the state institutions.
At one of the Cabinet sittings, the Prime Minister committed the Ministers of Economics and Finances to develop a strategy. He should not have done so. The statute of the Ministry of Economics in its very first chapter prescribes that its obligation is to develop a strategy. The Prime-Minister should have demanded already developed strategy from the Ministers.
All this will take us far. Why are we facing difficulties? Nowadays the country is in the period of transformation and nobody thinks about the plans for the future: what should we do after the transformation? Shall we start settling social, economic, political, military and so forth issues? Should everything be done in parallel? Naturally, one person cannot be responsible for everything. That’s why a program is necessary and delegation of responsibilities from one man to five, from five to 25, from 25 to 125. Everybody should be well aware of their functions. Grass root involvement in governance is important. In order the public to manage and monitor the governance process, it should have information.
None of the TV channels explains anything; none of the channels is educational; nobody says how to become involved and in what? If, for example, spending of a million GEL is intended in the field of agriculture, population does not know whether this sum of money is actually spent according to pre-defined purposes.David was saying that the lands are separated in the West of Georgia. These lands have been separated this way since ancient times in Guria, Imereti, Samegreli, Adjara and now if it hinders the development of agriculture what are we supposed to do? Resettle local people of Guria to some other place and plough the land and have a single land parcel?
No my friends, I will give you an example. We are 20 people here having 1 ha. land parcel each and we would like to cultivate plum plantations. If we all plant plum trees we will have 20 ha. plum plantation. Are we supposed to be resettled in order to cultivate plum plantation? What difference does it make whether it is on one land parcel or 20 separate ones? The most important is good cadaster; that’s where we should help the Government, and it should assist us in sanitary issues so that our products are not destroyed by diseases and white butterflies.
This is problematic and conclusion is that politics is prevailing over economyin our country. This practice has been deep rooted. Everything in economy is done from the point of political expediency. But where is this confrontation? We have to deal with the tasks of national importance and national tasks do not harmonize with market economy.
In order this task to be solved one has to have a different approach. This has to be solved in a different way but through political expediency keeping governance will be possible which a common practice in our society is. Political government thinks only about keeping power and if it manages and does something this way – then it is good.
Government has to be national. If the Government lacks the national spirit, people have to change it until they have the one with the national spirit. What kind of economic growth do people want? Do people want economic growth at every expense? What is the situation like now? Economic hardship has become common in our society. One million people left Georgia. Is Georgia experiencing economic thriving? Definitely. It will thrive but will we reap the results of these thriving? Will our offspring reap? And will it be a Georgian state or not?
If it continues the same way as it has been during these 20 years, economy will exist in Georgia but it will not be a Georgian state. This is the primary goal. Not economic growth in everything but the economic growth that will strengthen the welfare of every Georgian. How will it strengthen? I will tell you one example: the best way to strengthen the economic condition of the population is not through ploughing their lands but through donating a bus so that a person living in Tbilisi manages to arrive, plough his land and come back. The government should provide cheap train tickets, construct the road in Pirikita Khevsureti in order to give the opportunity to the locals who have left their houses to return there and live there at least in summer. Thus there are a lot of ways of solving tasks.
At last, I would like to ask one more question: Who is the second man in the country? Let us say that I know who the first is and who the second is. Then who is the third? The fourth? The fifth? The sixth? Who are those five persons who think and talk about Georgia every evening? Who are those people who will rejoin the Prime Minister and tell him that his ideas are not correct? Or are all the thoughts and ideas presented by the Prime Minister correct? If such a person does not exist and no one can object the Prime Minister it is catastrophic.
I will not stop on village problems. However, I would like to add: it does not matter whether 54% ,51, 47, or 31% live in villages and now you are saying that you are planning to save the village. We are talking about correct speeches and correct rhetoric. You are having a discussion with an American colleague and you are telling him/her that only 54% live in our villages and want to save the village from depopulation. The American will tell you that you have to decrease this number by 50%! We are facing two problems. We have to define: agricultural production and village issue. Village issue is a topic of national concern, while agricultural production belongs to economic sphere. Agricultural production is possible with no village population at all.
15 people cannot live on the income of 10. A person employed in the village will not be able to support him/herself. In the early times it was said that because of the price of meat, sheep and cattle breeding was not profitable. Then the prices increased but still there is no point. What kind of economy are we conducting that when the cattle and sheep breeding is not profitable whether the meat price is GEL 2 or GEL 20? This is yet another topic of discussion referring to employment, motivation and so on. Now I would like to add one more thing. We have to pay attention to the reforms.We can discuss any of the topics related to it in a very detailed manner. For example, we can break down the educational system to the public school. When a window is broken in a public school in Khulo or Khelvachauri and in Upper Zodi or in Shuakhevi, decision of changing that window is made by the Ministry located on Uznadze Street in Tbilisi.
We need a program, consolidation of the potential that we have, and we need competence plus national government. Civil society is a very good instrument; however, in often cases it is not understood in its right sense. Civil society is a buffer between the government and people, according to its interests. It should play this role not only between the central government and people, but between the local authorities and people of relevant municipality. Only then it can be a real civil society.