http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16056-2001Apr13.html
A Hero to the West, A Villain at Home
Shevardnadze Leads Georgians to Hardship
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, April 14, 2001; Page A12
TBILISI, Georgia -- Every day, Khatuna Alaverdashvili can
be found at the bazaar, hunched over a table selling lettuce and
onions. Most days she takes in just two or three laris -- about $1 to
$1.50. She barely gets by, and she knows whom to blame: President
Eduard Shevardnadze.
"What did he do?" she says with disgust.
"Only Shevardnadze and his friends are eating. We are not
eating."
It is a common feeling at the bazaar, which is filled
with unemployed engineers, teachers and actresses who have turned to
hawking produce to survive. As Alaverdashvili, 50, works herself into
a rage, others gather around, nodding in agreement, egging her on.
She's waving a knife menacingly in the air. Fortunately, it's a butter
knife. But the anger is razor sharp.
"If I had a gun," she declares, "I would
shoot him."
She does not really mean it, not literally, but
Shevardnadze is no stranger to such sentiments, having survived two
assassination attempts during his nine years as Georgia's head of
state. A hero in Washington from his days as the charismatic Soviet
foreign minister who helped bring down the Berlin Wall and end the
Cold War, Shevardnadze has become a villain to many at home.
He was supposed to be the visionary who in a coda to his
role in world history would return to his homeland and transform this
strategically located former Soviet republic into a model of
democratic market reforms, a tiny piece of the West right here in the
Caucasus Mountains. Instead, just after the 10th anniversary of its
declaration of independence, Georgia seems a forlorn place, mired in
misery, dismembered by civil war, sucked dry by corruption -- a
"failing state," in the words of Western analysts.
None of this is a secret to Shevardnadze, who readily
acknowledges the broad public pessimism. "I know that many in
Georgia hate me," he said in an interview in the presidential
offices. "But when it comes to trust, when it comes to
confidence, they trust me. They trust Shevardnadze."
Shevardnadze, 73, no longer cuts quite the same suave
figure he did as the silver-haired diplomat during the last days of
the Soviet Union. He has put on some weight and lost some hair. But he
still has a sharp, penetrating gaze, an easy sense of humor and a
disarmingly candid manner.
"Reform is not a revolution. Reform takes
time," he counseled in grandfatherly tones. "It requires a
change in mentality or mind-set. And it requires faith. And faith in
what you are doing ultimately prevails. Otherwise, there are
revolutions."
Perhaps, he mused, his stature fueled grand expectations
he could never meet. "There are periods in the history of
different nations," he said, "when too much is put on the
shoulders of one person."
Shevardnadze offered Georgia his broad shoulders in 1992
when he returned to where he had been the Soviet-era Communist Party
boss, this time as a democratic reformer. He inherited a mess, with
gangsters in charge in Tbilisi, the capital, and separatist rebels in
charge in the pro-Russian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Over the years, he succeeded in taming some of the wilder
elements, and an uncomfortable peace has taken hold. But the country
has been severed and 300,000 refugees remain displaced. Decrepit
hotels and apartment buildings in Tbilisi still overflow with people
who fled their homes in Abkhazia eight years ago.
Shevardnadze's attempts to introduce reforms earned
admiration in the West, which rewarded him with ample financial aid.
The West has long harbored special feelings for this country of 5
million, considering it a reliable friend in a volatile region, a
bulwark against Russian imperialism and a safe conduit for oil from
Central Asia.
However, Shevardnadze's push for change made him the
target of two attempts on his life, in 1995 and 1998. The United
States, anxious to protect a key ally, dispatched the CIA to train
security for Shevardnadze, who now likes to say he is "one of the
best-protected presidents" in the world.
Insecurity, though, is still the order of the day for
many of his people. Pensions average $7 a month and often are not paid
for months. Work is hard to find. Many buildings shelled in Tbilisi
during the civil war that followed independence remain crumbled or
abandoned. And electricity shortages have taken on crisis proportions,
especially during winter when the heat was out for long stretches.
Even now, the lights in the city's nicest hotels blink on
and off, and government officials find their way around the
pitch-black halls of a ministry building with flashlights. Traffic
signals often do not work, inviting utter chaos at some of the busiest
intersections while police officers chat idly.
"Things were good when he started," Nudar
Dzhamaspishvili, a 42-year-old cab driver, said of Shevardnadze.
"Now we see no results of his work -- only promises and promises.
When he came to power, we hoped that everything would be okay. We
expected that we would have pensions and wages paid on time, that
there would be jobs, that things would work. And nothing's
working."
Marina Abesadze, 43, was trained as a mineral engineer,
but now none of the mines in her small town is operating, so she came
to Tbilisi to look for work. These days she buys odds and ends in the
store -- shoe polish, detergent, air freshener -- and tries to resell
them door to door.
"You will not find a person in Georgia who will
praise Shevardnadze," she said. "I know the West thinks he's
a hero, but for us he's nothing."
Outside the railway station, Anya Olganezova and Natela
Badzaguya sell bread for a profit of just 2.5 cents a loaf.
Olganezova, 80, said she cannot live on her pension alone. "We're
like paupers," she said. "We sit here and cry."
Most of the former republics of the Soviet Union have
suffered similar problems during the transition from a planned
economy, but Georgia's are even worse than Russia's. While 40 percent
of Russians live below the poverty line, 60 percent of Georgians do;
the per capita gross domestic product is nearly twice as high in
Russia. The double-digit economic growth Georgia enjoyed in the
mid-1990s slowed to an anemic 1.9 percent last year.
"The Russians, the Poles, the Czechs, they've
adapted," said Jean-Michel Lacombe, ambassador from the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. "But here,
10 years after, you don't see any change, except for decay."
And onetime hopes for oil riches no longer look
realistic. While the United States supports a pipeline route that
would cross Georgian territory on its way from Azerbaijan to Turkey,
it remains years away from possible construction. Moreover, analysts
say the $70 million to $100 million in annual transit fees would not
be enough to save the Georgian economy.
Complicating the situation is what even Shevardnadze
admits is "very large-scale and rampant corruption," from
the streets to the corridors of power. As elsewhere in the former
Soviet Union, drivers are forced to pay bribes to obtain licenses,
students pay bribes to get into universities, police officers pay
bribes to get their jobs -- and then shake down drivers for bribes to
pay the debts incurred in bribing their supervisors.
Even more so than in Russia, a handful of powerful
oligarchs controls much of the economic resources in Georgia and has
profited handsomely from privatization of state assets. Many of those
accused of corruption are Shevardnadze's relatives or advisers.
"It's impossible to do serious business in Georgia
if you don't have a relation of the president," said Ivane
Merabishvili, the reformist chairman of the economic committee in
parliament.
While Shevardnadze has not been accused directly of
corruption, critics insist he is guilty of looking the other way.
"He's tired now," said Merabishvili. "He doesn't even
want to hear the word reform now. If he says he's fighting corruption
and wants reform, it's only to keep the West supporting him. As a
member of his party, I feel he doesn't have the political will to
change anything."
Shevardnadze strongly denies that either his energy or
his commitment to reform have flagged, but he does not dispute that
corruption has found its way into his inner circle. He compared his
inability to control relatives to the various scandals involving the
brothers of Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton. However, he vowed not to
protect anyone from an anti-corruption campaign he has launched.
"Everyone should be held accountable," he said.
"This fight against corruption will perhaps be the most difficult
because some close friends may be involved, even some relatives may be
involved. But we must be uncompromising."
Shevardnadze has held on to power in part because of a
reelection that both domestic critics and Western observers say was
rigged. The OSCE reported that the April 2000 vote granting him
another five-year term was marked by ballot-box stuffing and other
irregularities.
At the same time, many here say they worry that
Shevardnadze's departure would undercut Georgia's support in the West.
As Revaz Adamia, parliamentary leader of the president's party, put
it, "Maybe he's rather old already -- people are speaking about
how he's old and that maybe it's time for him to go -- but as a factor
of stability he is very important still, not only internally but
externally."
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