As Georgia is headed for elections, I sit down with Any Giorgadze and Giorgi Chagelishvili, of the leftist Georgian media outlet Mautskebeli, to talk about the country’s current political situation.
The Georgian political landscape has long been dominated by a rivalry between two political camps: That of billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, who controls the conservative Georgian Dream party which is currently in power, and that affiliated with former president Mikheil Saakashvili and the neoliberal legacy he left behind. While the former is displaying ever more authoritarian tendencies, and the latter is pitching itself to voters as saviours of Georgia's European future, many of the country’s most pressing issues are left ignored. With Mautskebeli focusing specifically on social movements and on struggles over material rights, we try to get at what really should be on the agenda and discuss what it might take for Georgian politics to eventually move in a more progressive direction.
If you want to read more about the deadly consequences of Saakashvili’s neoliberal reforms for Georgian miners, here is an article I wrote for Novara in 2019, after visiting the mining towns of Tqibuli and Chiatura. For reflections on the challenges of independent union organizing in contemporary Georgia, here is an interview I did in 2019, with co-founders of the Solidarity Network, representing the new generation of the Georgian labour movement.
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