Anti-corruption campaigns have a long tradition in Georgia. While in Soviet times they often disguised political purges, under the former President Eduard Shevardnadze, they seemed to be solely intended at satisfying international creditors. Over the last decades, Georgians have grown sceptic of official anti-corruption declarations.
During the Rose Revolution that followed the rigged November 2003 Parliamentary elections, the anti-corruption movement started for the first time from below: Georgian citizens expressed their anger at the corruption of the political class and forced the resignation of Eduard Shevardnadze. From the beginning, the popular mandate enjoyed by the new government was largely based on the hopes that it would fulfil its promises of tackling the corruption problem.

The newly elected President Mikhail Saakashvili declared corruption his main priority beside the restoration of Georgia’s territorial integrity and linked these two objectives by describing the separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as “black holes” ruled by corrupt leaders. To demonstrate his resolve to combat corruption up to the higher echelons of the state hierarchy, Saakashvili targeted Shevardnadze’s era top officials. The chief of Georgian railways, the former energy minister and Shevardnadze’s son-in-law were arrested and charged with tax evasion and embezzlement. However, Saakashvili was accused of acting on political grounds and of obstructing the judicial process, as officials eventually payed money to be released in a rather non-transparent procedure.

The purge in the corrupt police, where 15.000 officers were fired, was another drastic step of the government and has been so far the most visible success in the government’s new policy. Car-drivers are no longer stopped and asked to pay bribes by policemen at improvised road check points and the disappearance of the corrupt traffic police is said to be the factor behind the surge in the number of Armenian tourists this summer.

However, it soon became clear that the fight against corruption would require more than spectacular measures, hence a complete system change and wide ranging institutional reforms. The biggest challenge for the Georgian state, as stated at different occasions by Georgian officials, is to eliminate the dependence on individuals and move towards a more predictable system based on institutions. Is Georgia’s ambitious reform program still more part of a discourse aimed at the international community or has Georgia indeed earned his position as a model for other countries in the post-Soviet space? To what extent is the new administration’s approach different?

Different styles, diffferent pratices ?

The difference of styles between Shevardnadze and Saakashvili is first sensible on a discursive level. Whereas Shevardnadze depicted corruption as inherent to the Georgian mentality, Saakashvili has declared that it is not a fatality and Georgians are able to overcome it.

The cultural bases of corruption were repeatedly emphasised by Shevardnadze. In fact, he nurtured the societal acceptance of corruption through this fatalistic discourse. Externally, he used it to justify deficits in the implementation of reforms and prolong international credits despite obvious failures. He used conventional explanations to the phenomenon of corruption by stressing the weakness of the state and of its leadership, unable to cope with the general instability of the transition period. In reality, however, corruption was encouraged from the top on in every echelons of the administration. Corrupt low-level officials were expected to hand over a part of their income generated through bribery to their superiors. The Soviet practice of blackmailing agents in the administration was still rife under Shevardnadze.

Saakashvili, on the contrary, has won international confidence and approval by his apparent optimism and determination in rooting out corruption. As a result, the June 2004 Brussels donor conference secured pledges worth €850 million from the international community and Georgia has been declared eligible for assistance under the U.S. New Millenium Challenge Account, which is conditional on the level of corruption.

Conscious of the limits of his strategy of targeting specific individuals in the early stages of his Presidency, Saakashvili launched measures aimed at addressing the institutional sources of corruption such as downsizing the state administration, especially in the so-called “power ministries” (interior ministry, state security, ministry of defense), and increasing the salaries of key officials (tax police, judges, customs officers).
George Soros and the UNDP set up a fund to reform the civil service by securing the payment of decent salaries. Another major pillar of Georgia’s anti-corruption policy is the easing of tax burdens and the simplification of the licensing system, measures developed to boost entrepreneurship. The number of business activities requiring a special license has been cut from 909 to 159. As argued by the government, the success of this policy is reflected in a sensible increase in tax collection: public revenues have more than doubled in the last 19 months.

Meritocracy against patronage

The firmness shown by Saakashvili in his demonstrative crackdown on corrupt officials and police officers may still be lacking when supporting more crucial reforms. The civil service and the judiciary are key reform areas and vital to the government’s declared objectives of creating an accountable and transparent state administration and a favourable investment climate. Anti-corruption measures in the civil service listed in the 2005 National Anti-Corruption Strategy of Georgia are aimed in particular at encouraging merit-based competition, i.e. meritocracy against patronage.

However, patronage networks are not easily disbanded and may prove long lasting, especially at the local level. The local population in places such as Samegrelo and Imereti has faced the practice of Saakashvili of naming young cadres loyal to him, but not originating from the provinces, with scepticism. This illustrates the limits of the anti-corruption reforms as the government, in its attempts to change administrational staff, is faced with a lack of qualified and well-educated professionals and must rely on a younger generation of inexperienced cadres, not immune to corruption accusations. In this case, the remedy may well be an increase in Georgia’s human capital and a reform of the university system. A centralized mass examination has been recently organised to replace traditional entry exams that allowed professors to pocket bribes from candidates.

The anti-smuggling operations at the South-Ossetian border have also revealed some limits in the government’s strategy. The only consequence of the dismantling of the Ergneti market has been apparently the relocation of small traders, while the destroyed “smuggler roads” have been replaced by new roads. Smuggling is said to continue as strong as ever. In this case the poor traders have been hit, as they are deprived of their livelihood, while officials, law enforcement bodies and large-scale smugglers remained for the most part unaffected.

It is still too early to assess whether the anti-corruption campaign in Georgia will bring the expected results. International organisations may need countries such as Georgia as showcases for successful anti-corruption reforms, as the fight against corruption is now an integral part of the global discourse on development and has enabled organisations such as the World Bank to reinvent themselves. However, although the fight against corruption enjoys a broad international consensus, it is still unclear to what extent anti-corruption measures advocated by international organisations can indeed prove successful in the long term.

Still it would require a certain dose of pessimism to argue that nothing has changed in Georgia. Georgia can already be seen to have scored more points on the anti-corruption front than its neighbour Ukraine, where the lavish lifestyle of the President’s son was recently criticised. The Ukrainian President subsequently dismissed the entire government to avoid corruption accusations. In their hope to increase the state budget by fighting corruption, Kyrgyz officials have declared that they might look at Georgia as a model (Eurasia Daily Monitor, 07/06/05). In this context, Georgia can still claim its position as a model and inspiration for other countries in the post-Soviet space. However, it remains to be seen whether countries with huge natural resources that will increase in the future and ruled by clans such as Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan will ever be the theatre of anti-corruption revolutions.