Countdown to Confrontation

This is a brief online propaganda video produced by one of the radical youth activist groups who've been targeting Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili in the run-up to opposition protests on April 9. The video condemns Saakashvili for leading the country into last year's war with Russia. Government ministers have accused opposition activists like these of effectively doing Moscow's work by trying to cause political unrest and oust the president at a time when Georgia is struggling to recover from the conflict and the economic crisis which followed it. More details from my column in The Moscow Times:

Dining out in downtown Tbilisi has become a somewhat uncomfortable experience recently, at least for President Mikheil Saakashvili. The Georgian leader has been rudely interrupted twice while eating at restaurants in the capital over the past few weeks. His persecutors, a mob of rowdy students, have been harrying him as the opposition pumps itself up for mass demonstrations which they hope will force Saakashvili to resign.

“We think the president shouldn’t be spending time in expensive restaurants while the country has so many problems,” one of the students told me. Their protest group, called ‘April 9’ after the date on which the opposition rallies will begin, is one of several dissident youth factions which have emerged recently. They blame Saakashvili for all Georgia’s problems – for the disastrous war with Russia, for the huge refugee problem it created, for the loss of Georgian territory and for the economic crash which followed. “If Saakashvili leaves and we get a more stable, responsible and diplomatic president, then things will change,” I was assured.

Another youth group has been busy pasting thousands of anti-Saakashvili posters all over Tbilisi. Many of them simply feature the name of the group – ‘Why?’ – over a huge question mark. Others show a picture of the Georgian leader with his arm around an American celebrity masseuse, or an unflattering photograph of Saakashvili surrounded by tragic images of last year’s fighting, attempting to satirise him as a playboy and a war-monger.

The humour might be vicious, but it recalls the impudent antics of the youth movement Kmara, which campaigned against President Eduard Shevardnadze during the run-up to the ‘Rose Revolution’ in 2003 which swept Saakashvili to power. Kmara, which had strong links to Saakashvili’s inner circle, used to harass Shevardnadze when he made public appearances, blowing whistles and shouting offensive slogans, and put up posters showing Shevardnadze and his allies being flushed down a toilet together.

The opposition, often criticised in the past for its monotonously unimaginative protest tactics, appears now to have picked up some tricks from the Rose Revolutionaries, who knew how to use the power of pop culture and political satire to enliven their rallies. The April 9 activists don’t like being compared to the pro-Saakashvili campaigners of 2003, but their confrontational strategies illustrate how merciless the political struggle has become again here, as opposition supporters seek to oust yet another Georgian president by force of numbers on the streets of Tbilisi.