Starting points for dialog
Posted by Anna Dolidze at 4/14/2009 8:43 AM 
Categories: Christian- Democrats,dialog
Tags: dialog Christian-Democrats
Categories: Christian- Democrats,dialog
Tags: dialog Christian-Democrats
Leader of Georgian Christian Democrats came up with a series of pre-conditions for confidence building leading up the dialog between the government and opposition.
These steps are
- resignation of the Chair of Supreme Court and Central Election Commission
- return of TV Imedi to the legitimate owner i.e. Patarkacishvili family
- resignation of the Board of the Public Broadcasting
- granting of satellite broadcasting license to Maestro TV, which is broadcasting in Tbilisi only
- creation of a public board for monitoring objectivity of media
- creation of a monitoring group that will consider complaints against law enforcement agencies for violations committed against demonstrators
Representative of the Parliamentary Majority, Zurab Melikishvili stated that the ruling party will only start discussing these points during the process of dialog with the opposition. On the other hand, Usupashvili of Republican party stated that these questions have long been raised by the opposition and no negotiation is needed for the government to fulfill them.
So there are several questions to be address at this point, from a lay person's viewpoint:
1) who will guarantee fulfillment of reached agreements even the government and opposition decide to negotiate? EU has been mentioned as a possible mediator and guarantor
2) Many suspect that the government will convince the opposition to stop demonstrations and then not fulfill their promises as it happened several times in 2008.
3) Meanwhile, people will be disappointed in opposition leaders and it will be hard to convince them to take part in protests later
4) Independent experts indicate (see Zurab Abashidze's interview to Maetsro TV yesterday) that there is a clear need for the government to implement certain confidence building measures in order to start restoring trust in its actions. Government representatives are unwilling to comprehend this fact. Georgian public and opposition has been tricked too often for them to be able to blindly trust Saakashvili's promises. Some of the initiatives proposed by Targamandze could serve as such measures.
The biggest discomfort for me is that - All or Nothing approach - that opposition has adopted. I can feel and comprehand its underlined reasons, but All/Nothing conception is originally false in terms of political and sociological science. There will always be some persons having different perception of ALL. And some - resisting the reached results, even if they are good enough, because it was less than ALL!
Nothing is totally absurd as well, and there is the third option of - Worse than it was before!
As a human with bound nature I need to visualize the realistic outcomes,to ensure my basic feeling of safety.
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