By Tara Bahrampour
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 16, 2007
TBILISI, Georgia, Nov. 15 -- When visiting State Department official Matthew J. Bryza appeared on Georgia's state television Wednesday night, much of the country tuned in, in part because there wasn't much else to watch.
The country's main opposition TV station had been off the air for seven days, shut down in the middle of a program after President Mikheil Saakashvili declared a state of emergency to stem anti-government protests. Outside, riot police had chased residents through the streets with billy clubs in the former Soviet republic that President Bush has called "a beacon of democracy."
The United States and other allies of Georgia had recoiled at what seemed authoritarian tactics. So last weekend, the State Department sent Bryza -- a deputy assistant secretary, avowed Georgiaphile and old friend of Saakashvili -- to try to cool the fires and end a major embarrassment for U.S. efforts to seed democracy abroad.
Addressing the Georgian public, Bryza used state TV to urge his hosts to reopen private stations. "A cornerstone of democracy is that all TV stations should remain open," he said.
Everything Bryza has done here has been big news in a country where many people view friendship with the United States as a ticket to peace and prosperity. Shuttling among government ministers, opposition leaders and executives from a shuttered TV station, he has pushed for dialogue, pressed for the state of emergency to be lifted and stressed the importance of a free media, especially in advance of a presidential election set for Jan. 5.
On Thursday, the Georgian Parliament voted to lift the state of emergency starting Friday, but the main opposition TV station will remain off the air, facing criminal charges of having tried to foment the government's overthrow.
Bryza said in an interview that he applied no pressure or threats against Saakashvili's government but tried instead to talk friend to friend.
"Georgia has a chance to become an example for many other people who have the same ambitions for political and economic freedom that Georgians have," he said, explaining his mission here after lunch with the mayor of Tbilisi, the Georgian capital. "To put it in another way, if democracy can't flourish in Georgia, where else in this expanded part of the world can it?"
Bryza said that for the United State, the 2003 uprising known as the Rose Revolution had offered a new kind of alliance in the region, bringing to power people who shared U.S. values, had studied at American universities and spent time in Washington. "Suddenly we had in power the most pro-reform government we had ever experienced in the former Soviet Union," he said.
Assistance poured in in volumes disproportionate to Georgia's tiny size -- the country received $300 million over five years under the U.S. government's Millennium Challenge Corp. program, even before it had met all the criteria of openness, Bryza said. The United States increased energy, infrastructure and military assistance begun under the previous president, Eduard Shevardnadze. Georgia has returned the favor with close collaboration with the United States, including sending troops to Iraq.
Standing before cheering crowds on a state visit in 2005, the first by an American president, Bush made his "beacon of democracy" statement; Tbilisi named a main road after him.
Saakashvili has cleaned up a corrupt police force, fixed roads, reduced power outages and opened the country to wide-ranging foreign investment. "This guy did a miracle; he took the country from ruins," Temuri Yakobashvili, executive vice president of the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies, said of Saakashvili. "Now we're not talking about if Georgia is a failed state or not. We are talking about the level of democracy."
But many Georgians felt left behind by rapid pro-business restructuring. Some felt that Saakashvili was concentrating power in the presidency and treating critics as agents of Russia, which has been trying to reestablish influence here, and charged that the Americans tended to turn a blind eye to his failings.
"They didn't want to hear anything negative about Georgia; we always hear about how it's the only real success story of U.S. foreign policy under Bush's government," said Mamuka Tsereteli, professor of international relations at American University in Washington and executive director of the America-Georgia Business Council. "Because they thought that once a leader is pro-Western and pro-American, they think that everyone below him will be pro-Western and pro-American."
Bryza said U.S. officials are well aware that many Georgians feel disaffected. "We've thought for a long time that it's very important for the president here to reconnect with the population," he said.
Some critics have suggested making U.S. aid more directly tied to democratic processes. Aside from the Millennium Challenge money, American aid has been largely free of conditions, said Jonathan Kulick, director of studies at the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies.
Bryza said that putting conditions on aid wouldn't be necessary if elections were free and fair and media outlets were restored. "I hope we're going to end up in a place where everything works out. If it doesn't, then we'll take another look at it. . . . And if this place is off-track, in terms of democracy, then relationships will change."
On Tuesday night, Bryza met with Saakashvili, a 39-year-old Columbia University-educated lawyer. At the meeting, which included members of the president's inner circle, Bryza said, the two old friends "went off to the side for a while, drank some wine, talked about life." He described the president's mood as reflective, adding that for Saakashvili, recent events had been "a wake-up call."
"Now, I think the leadership sees, 'Aha, maybe people were right on the outside. Maybe we do need to communicate in a different way.' And now I feel that some of our arguments that we've been making for a long time are getting traction."
Giga Bokeria, a spokesman for the government, rejected suggestions that the decision to lift the state of emergency was the result of outside pressure. "It's not that we reopen the media because Matt Bryza is telling us to," he said. "This is our decision. . . . We will not be thinking about pleasing anybody except ourselves -- and our electorate."
While emphasizing that Georgia needed the United States and would not ignore "our allies' legitimate interest and concern," Bokeria called international reaction to the events of Nov. 7 overblown. "All the steps made were necessary to protect our sovereignty and democracy," he said.
Bryza, who arrived in Georgia last weekend, had extended his stay two days and said he might return as soon as this weekend. He said Thursday night that he was still in talks with the government about reopening the popular TV station Imedi, which police raided in the middle of a live broadcast the night of the crackdown.
Bryza met Thursday with journalists from the station and said he is talking with E.U. representatives and the Georgian government about bringing in an ombudsman to oversee ethics at all TV stations.
He stressed that the watchdog should not be American. "Our job here has been to broker the deal and make it happen," he said. "But this needs to be a European solution, not a U.S. solution."
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