Why are there protests in Georgia?

Press Clark, thanks very much for being with us. Just give us a sense of the significance of this unrest that we’re seeing in Georgia. Yeah, it’s it’s it’s a very troubled country. I mean this, this arose last year. This, this controversial law on foreign agents was introduced in February last year. Same thing happened. People came out on the streets, lots of quite a lot of violence. The government withdrew it. They’ve suddenly reintroduced it in more or less the same wording. And there are elections in October, I think it is. So it’s a very sort of difficult time for Georgia and Georgia’s in a sort of difficult place. It’s got interesting neighbours. As you can see, It was intrinsically part of of the Soviet Union. Stalin was born there, famously in Georgia, and it was part of the Russian Empire from 1800 under Paul the 1st and then Alexander the First. You know, they don’t get many name checks in modern, modern news programmes, so they were Czar Alexander Paul the 1st. So Georgia is a difficult country. It’s 4 million people, About 1/3 of the population live in Tbilisi. It’s very agricultural, but it is a country that the Russians regard as intrinsically Russia, like Ukraine. They think it’s intrinsically Russia. Again, like Ukraine, it’s almost mirror image. There are two breakaway republics, Abkhazia, South of Setia, more or less on the Black Sea coast there. The Russians have even started building a naval base on the Black Sea coast in Abkhazia. Breakaway Republic, totally illegal. But they assume that those republics are there to stay. And of course the Russians do not like the idea of another revolution in Georgia. They want the government to lean to Moscow, which it has been in recent years, but people on the streets won’t have that. And so they see this this law as a piece of Moscow law and they’re pushing against it. And the people on the street are very clear. They are EU minded, they’re European minded. They don’t want to fall into the Russian sphere. And the Russians think that Georgia is, is not far away from falling back into this sphere. And is there any more proof from the protesters against this law other than the fact that the law is very similar to one that was passed in in Russia a couple of years ago, decade or so ago now? Yes. I mean the idea is that a foreign agents law will be the the mechanism for cracking down on all external linkages really. And I mean the EU has made it clear that if this law is passed that you can forget about getting into the EU with this law. the United States has said the same, Britain said the same. The Western world is leaning on Georgia to say if you pass this law, you basically put yourself on the same trajectory as Putin’s Russia. And therefore, it would be very difficult for us to relate to you in the way that most of your citizens seem to want to don’t know. Hungarians have a similar law, though, and obviously they’re part of the group. They do. And it doesn’t go down very well at all in the EUI mean, partly it’s it’s it’s depends on the way these laws are implemented and there’s a big constitutional crisis coming because the president of Georgia, who’s Salome, what is it now? Salome Zura Bashvilli. Zura Bashvilli. And she is against it. She said last year she wouldn’t sign it and the law will be passed because the party, the governing party called the Georgia Dream, have got 86 seats, 83 seats out of 150 in the parliament, so they’ll definitely get it through. She has said she won’t sign it. We’ll see it when if it goes that far. I think her stance, even though it’s a ceremonial one, will be quite important into deciding whether this goes any further on the streets. Should help you with that name, Michael. But it didn’t come to me either. Now, viewers, not eventually. Previous president Mikhail Saakashvili. Right. I got that name correct. What? What does his legacy have to do with what we’re seeing now, do you think, in Georgia? Yeah. He was a very glamorous figure. I mean, I chaired him in London when he came here and he was like a rock star. And he had that sort of image amongst his younger people. He’s been arrested by the Georgia Dream Party. He’s been in prison for a long time. He’s very frail in health. He looks much, much older. I don’t think he’d be with us for too much longer. And he’s the popular president of Georgia when they looked as if they were developing as a as a new post Soviet country and moving westwards. And he’s still a voice. And you know, he said the last thing that Putin said to him, the last conversation he had with Putin. Putin said, he said your friends in the West promise you nice things, but they never deliver. I’ll never promise you nice things, but I will always deliver. And that tells us a lot about the way Putin views his former Soviet republics. OK, Professor Clark, really do appreciate that update on the situation in Georgia. And that’s definitely one to watch. When is the the votes due to be held? Is it is it coming? If they’re in this second reading now? So I think it’ll be by the end of the week they’re pushing it through. So I think we’ll see some development of this certainly by what are we on now, Wednesday, probably Friday or maybe Monday. OK. Professor Clarke, thank you very much.