The embers of a love lost..

I'm feeling as though not only have I reached the end of a very long week - but of a very long sigh as well...
MAybe its because I've just come back from a 2 hour long lunch break with an ex-UN official/French book writer who has spent the last 12 years here. In that markedly French manner he exclaimed about how he fell in love with Georgia - and like a love affair that turns sour - he has watched his love turn to bitterness - yet as he says - how can you ever stop loving?. He speaks about France and Britain and about how they have reached democracy - through blood and sweat and tears - through a deep seated desire for freedom - through a sense of revolution. And he talks about here almost as though the people do not quite deserve democracy or freedom --- and that only those who truly want and desire it will ever gain it. MAybe it's the question of our lifetimes - when how and why democracy. I guess it is the ultimate in the rule of the self determination of peoples. Maybe freedom is not a value that all humans strive for above all else. Maybe we over-estimate the value of freedom? Don't most people just want to be able to live their lives with dignity and in peace? To have a roof over their heads, their family around them - and most importantly of all - a purpose and sense of hope to their lives. A certain amount of freedom is neccesary for all of this to happen - but is democracy? Didn't the Soviet Union (as controversial and difficult and exploitative as it was) offer a certain kind of freedom? Or a certain kind of purpose and hope?

At the moment I am working on a project about measuring democracy in Azerbaijan - I pour over their consittution and read about all the NGO's working there - and despite the rhetoric and the "elections" and the "civil society" it is not democratic in any sense. But its story is not so much about the failure of democracy, but the success of semi authoritarianism. It's not democratic because that was never the aim - when Aliyev came to power in 1993 he wasn't concerned about democracy - he wasn't elected because he was a democrat - he was elected because he offered stability. Stability in the midst of war - stability in the midst of economic difficulties - stability in a world that had thrust that country into independence and taken away the struture and support that had maintained and nourished it for so long. Stability in a time of questions - and dilemmas - dilemmas over what Azerbaijan is? How it will maintain unity and diversity? How it will strive forward without the presence of a great superpower to enforce an ideology?

We also talked about the need for cooperations here -the need for investment and economic development and the of course the inevitable requirement of a drive to stamp out corruption. But how do you rid a society of corruption? What elements are neccesary? How do you root out the inevitable levers and pulls that have been embedded so deeply over the past 200 or more yearsfrom every level of society. How do you tell someone who is so used to paying a border guard to get past and on their way that this is a form of corruption? Or that a mother who makes the system allow her daughter to get a good education by utilising the links she has within her own family is actually "harming the fabric of society"? These kinds of corruption will ruin her daughter's chances of finding a job within Georgia and will more than likely push her daughter to leave the Caucasus with her good education and get as far away as possible -- but how do you stop it? For most people they don't even look at this as corruption -- yet... yet... it hurts Georgia. It means that billions of dollars of aid money and investment from abroad has been looted and mismanaged.

I dislike the idea of the free market - I dislike the idea of cooperations selling Georgian oil and the tourist industry setting up its infastructure throughout this place - because the result might just be another form of exploitation - a small elite - probably foreign - making a lot of money off a resource rich country - and the people gaining little. It is what the protesters and liberals seem to fight against in Europe. Yet it is so so difficult to formulate another way -- because people here are so highly educated - so proud - so hospitable and so eager to be a part of Europe - and yet they live in desperate economic conditions. The legal system does not function in most of the provinces - and the incentive for the young and the educated to stay in Georgia is for the most part achieved through the near impossibility of getting a visa to leave. Atleast give people jobs - that's what the overwhelming cry seems to be --- let us work say the older generations - let us work for more than 50 lari (about $25) a month. Provide some kind of trade - some kind of investment - something for the people to be employed in - for the unemployed to do every day - and feel proud that they are providing for their family. The international aid seems to go round in circles - it doesn't come with enough conditions on how it is used - and on where it ends up. It is not sustainable in the way it needs to be. The situation makes me long for some cooperations - makes me wish that investors would come here - because despite myself - I feel as though atleast then there would be some jobs and some sense of hope. Hopelessness is the worst of all diseases. And there is a horrible sense that the Rose Revolution with its promises and high dreams is evaporating into discontent and depression. The love affair the population had with Saakashveli is dying out - leaving almsot no alternatives and options. "He is an idiot" they yell -- "he's stupid and young and a womaniser".

I wonder if there is some alternative to it all? Alternative to a country taken over by cooperations - alternative to a country where 75% of the population lives beneath the poverty line? Some system that might begin to address economic inequality? ironically - a lot of the reason Georgia is the way it is today is in part due to the dream of an alternative system... that left deep scars, endless corruption and trauma in its wake - but also for a lot of people provided security and purpose too. Revolution does not seem viable -- some kind of sense of international responsibility seems the only thing I increasingly return to. A sense that we are all people - and therefore we must care what happens to others - and we must be aware of our own participation in systems of injustice. A sense that we are not just individuals or families or states but we are a community - vibrantly diverse - yes - endlessly varied --- indeed -- but a community nontheless. And with this attitude -- maybe places like Georgia might begin to believe in the system - they might begin to trust the rule of some kind of law -- and we might begin to trust each other.

Until then - I will remain in my office in Tbilisi - and I'll interview my women IDP's and I'll research democracy in Azerbaijan - I'll love and live with my host family here - and will attempt to see lots of mountains and have many wonderful discussions - not only with French men who are struggling through the difficult embers of a past love -- but with those still falling in love.