The Easter holidays gave us a chance to forget, albeit for a few short days, the troubling developments ongoing around us. Doing without the news for a while was indeed very relaxing – the sacred days of the Holy Week that made most of us contemplate in the most elevated spiritual disposition about things other than our everyday trivial routine, readying us for Christ’s Resurrection Sunday, the most delightful day for a Christian believer, and not only.
Now that those joyful days have passed, we are back to our regular socio-political struggle for survival, with life bringing the same earthiness, directness and bitterness to the prose we are accustomed to: the war still raging in the scorched and devastated Ukrainian land, lives either wasted and unaccounted for, or at perpetual risk of being lost; prices skyrocketing all around the globe; occasional hot spots popping up on earth; hostilities not relenting between superpowers; global problems becoming more incisive; and human pains sharper and their shrills more penetrating.
Against this dreary background that chills us to the marrow, Sakartvelo has its own problems to be taken care of, the political confrontation at its acme, generating the utmost societal polarization and keeping the taxpayer from useful productive work; enduring universal strain, caused by the possibility of the opening of a second front, conducive to losing peace and calm forever; Georgia’s current government firmly setting its sights on peaceful development, not deviating from this no matter how hard it might be not to flinch in the burning spotlight shining on it nonstop; the inconceivable growth of prices, when the value of the dollar plummets by the day, creating the impression that some mysterious scam is being perpetrated; the case of four Georgian judges charged with corruption, losing access to America, and waiting for the time when justice will be meted out in their favor; the international scandal, taking roots in Georgia and organized by a Georgian gentleman of fishy reputation, who diddled the retired elderly out of their savings, a mega-swindler who should have known better, pumping the pilfered wealth into the Georgian oppositional media, his unmatchable ‘exploit’ still further regrettable because the world will know his origins and make conclusions thereof; and, finally, the famous Rikoti Pass debacle, a route which takes people back and forth from east Georgia to the west and vice versa, with its landslides right before Easter, damaging the now-under construction road. They say rainy weather triggered the slide, but who can contend against weather? Mother Nature will always have its way over Man’s will to make life easier at her expense. And now, to add insult to injury, rumor has it at the grassroots level that the whole gigantic project might have more faults to it, which is hard to believe, but, as always happens in cases like this, the clouds are banking up over the idea of the much-spoken-about and long-awaited-for project of the century. How big could the trouble we have presumably found ourselves in be? Jokes abound about it. One funny comment was made by an oppositionist that the landslide was manmade to prevent people from coming over to Tbilisi to participate in the oppositional rally on the 9th of April. This one needs no further comment: the current means and ways of political fight are widely known to our public. Hopefully, we will all wise up a little as time passes.
Now, refreshing the ebb and flow of our politics and power play, just a little patience would help if we had any at all. Why should we suffer so much tension and exertion in a sweet and beautiful land like Sakartvelo, where the very air is replete with melodies and an innate sense of happiness? All because there is that uncanny interminable altercation between the opposed political forces – a stupid, vain, fruitless and irrelevant verbose skirmish. Perhaps we should enact a stringent law prohibiting the unfounded and unnecessarily loud wordy clash between them!
Op-Ed by Nugzar B. Ruhadze
