Until President Shevardnadze resigned, Mark Mullen was the director of the National Democratic Institute in Georgia. He then went on to start the Georgian chapter of Transparency International. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Georgian Service sat down with Mullen to discuss previous and current events.
Let’s start with the most obvious question – your take on what’s taking place right now in Georgia. Where are we at?
In general I’m quite optimistic because a couple of years ago, there was a lot of uncertainty and change doesn’t happen when there’s uncertainty. Change happens when there’s clarity. Now there’s clarity. Now, the overwhelming majority of people understand what’s going on and understand the task ahead. That doesn’t mean there’s not a lot of work to do, but the path is pretty clear.
Let’s discuss both optimistic and pessimistic scenarios of what’s at stake. If one happens, the other won’t. How do these different futures look?
I think the elections are very important. Remember, in 2003, the election commission pretended that Shevardnadze and his party had won the election and they didn’t. So there was a change a couple of weeks later. What’s important is the outcome and hopefully that it is an electoral one. If the pro-European and democratic forces win, then I think Georgia will be in the European Union – It’ll take a long time, and everybody knows that, but it’ll be great for Georgia along the way because of the ability for Georgians to work in Europe – basically a macroeconomic guarantee for Georgia.
It means democracy. It means finally there’s not the big strong man that saves Georgia from the previous leader and all that stuff, which is great. That change is going to happen. The question is when. If it doesn’t happen around this election, then it’s going to take much longer. I think that Bidzina Ivanishvili would like for Georgia to be a place that he can peacefully and calmly retire and spend the rest of his life in sort of passive control, that Georgia can become a center of international sanctions busting and international sanctions avoidance for Russia and China as well.
I think that’s the idea behind a Chinese company taking over the port of Anaklia. That means that it will just slow the process down and that a generation of Georgians will have to wait longer in order to live in a normal democratic, European country. It could also mean that Georgia will become a Russian colony again, as it was before. It’s a pretty unpleasant scenario, but in one way or another that will be the trajectory. The longer Georgia has to wait to join its inevitable European path, the more difficult it will be for it to get there. This is the best opportunity to do that anytime for the next several years.
Speaking of big, strong men, or, in this case, short strong men, what’s your take on the man in question?
I don’t really know very much about him. It was really interesting reading the speech that he gave several weeks ago, how there are these foreigners that are trying to control Georgia and the Global War Party and things like that. People in Georgia who only speak Georgian and don’t get outside of Georgia very much, who perhaps haven’t spent any time in the European Union or other countries, I can imagine might believe that.
His message could be compelling for people who don’t understand much about the interconnected world. I think for Georgians who’ve lived abroad, studied abroad, have more international experience, maybe are polylingual, that message does not resonate. I think that he’s increasingly losing touch with reality. I’ve only met him a couple of times, but my sense is that he probably doesn’t have too many people around him that are speaking with him very honestly.
What was your impression back then?
I met him at his house very soon after he announced that he was entering politics. He called me and told me that he planned to become involved. I said, fantastic, everybody agrees it’s time for the National Movement to go. There was human rights abuse. I said, it’s great that somebody’s doing that and I wish you the best of luck. He more or less made me an offer to join his team and I said I’d like to preserve neutrality and work for Georgia in a sort of non-partisan way.
It was all very friendly, but then, after the meeting which ended relatively soon after I said that, there was a TV show, Anatomia, about me, about how corrupt I was, yet it was pleasing to see they’d discovered nothing, and I figured they must have done a lot of research and didn’t really find anything. I think his calculation was a little cynical: if they portray me as a corrupt “Mishas Dzmakatsi” (Misha’s buddy in Georgian), then after the elections, no matter what I say it will be beneficial for them: If I say something that suits them, they’ll say: even Misha’s Dzmakatsi is saying this! If I criticize them, they’ll say of course he would say that he is Misha’s buddy. So it was a win-win scenario for them, but I don’t really care, that’s just how it is.
Do you think his offer to join him was genuine? In what capacity?
He didn’t really talk about it. The guy’s got a lot of money, and I think he’s used to spending it on and deploying people that are helpful to him. There was no discussion about that, I don’t know what he wanted me to do, we didn’t make it to the job description part of that. But he was a nice enough guy, had some interesting art, lovely decorations and a very impressive estate.
Speaking of Misha’s Dzmakatsi, how deserved do you think that was as a nickname?
It wasn’t at all. I mean, look, I know him, and I have hung out with him, and whatever else, but we were never that close. To be honest, I was much closer to Zurab Zhvania, who I have a whole lot of respect for. With Misha, sure, we talked, we had lunch a couple times. On February 6th, 2004, quite soon after Shevardnadze resigned, before the parliament had changed, the national movement illegally amended the constitution and they did it very quickly, in 36 hours. There wasn’t even time for any of the foreigners to say anything about it, nobody knew what was happening and nobody really wanted to make much noise anyway, it was this new government and it was all to accommodate Zhvania to be the prime minister, and for Misha to get the presidential role.
But it’s a really bad precedent to do that. I went on Rustavi 2 TV channel, and I said this is illegal. It’s a really bad precedent to do that, it’s a really bad idea and do not do this and Misha put out the order: don’t talk to Mark, he’s no longer invited to anything, don’t meet with him, and that lasted until 2007. I didn’t really care, I had other things going on, I was never close enough for that to be a big problem for me. I never made any money from them, Misha and I had never really been that close. But I think right now there’s just sort of this general portrayal by the Georgian Dream people, about the global war party that brought Misha into power. I don’t know whether they think I’m a card-carrying member, but I’m not.
The next question I was going to ask was how did we come to this? But let me rephrase, could the West have done something from 2012 to this day so that it didn’t have to come to this?
In 2008 when Russia invaded, Obama was on a plane going on the first holiday he’d had in a long time to Hawaii with his family. John McCain, who he was running against, said we are all Georgians. Obama was very nervous about it. It was as if Obama was the new guy and McCain’s the guy who really understands these things. I think Obama’s policy towards Misha and Georgia was that Misha needs to get over himself. That Misha thinks that somehow the United States owes him a favor. I mean, Americans love Georgia. Any American who’s ever visited Georgia falls in love with the place. But that’s no basis for a foreign policy. The reality of it is Georgia is an independent country. It really is truly independent. Trying to say you guys have to have our back and solve our problems for us is not healthy. If you select Bidzina, fine. And Georgia chose Bidzina. It was a fair election. Luckily, Misha had the good grace not to fight that. Then Otsneba took over. I think more recently, as things have migrated, that the ambassador has done great work in clarifying U.S. foreign policy.
I think that the sanctions that were put in place on the people who passed the Russian law, together with the speed of their implementation, has to be a record in the United States Congress. I think this is fantastic and very appropriate but I don’t know what else the United States is supposed to do, because this is a Georgian problem. There is also a take in Georgia that I often hear from some people, that America will save us and Europe is a mess. I don’t know. A big part of American foreign policy since Obama is that Georgia’s future is with the EU. That the United States’ best role is to support the EU and Georgia’s relationship with the EU. I think that’s a very smart policy.
Do you see a continuation on this sanction path? Tightening the screws, so to speak?
Well, these sanctions are largely symbolic. But symbolism matters. I think it’s making it even more clear for all Georgians that Georgian Dream is rejecting the West. I’ve never heard EU officials speak so clearly about this rejection and about this government.
Do you think there is clarity about what’s at stake? With what’s happening in Georgia geopolitically, that they might lose Georgia to Russia?
Yes, I think there’s clarity and I think they understand that. Now, the question is, what can we do about it? With Ukraine, the West could do a lot more. I think that the West should do a lot more. Ukraine needs more help than it is getting. With Georgia, Georgia is not at war. There is no chance that Georgia is going to enter war, and how hard the West should push is complicated because Georgia’s an independent country. This is a time where citizens of Georgia need to decide what happens and make that happen. You’re an independent country, there is no doubt about that, so you will decide what’s going to happen on October 26th and you make it happen. It won’t happen from Washington or Brussels or anywhere else.
Interview by Vazha Tavberidze
