Another misguided Saakashvili decision kills two

Workers raise a billboard showing the new Georgian parliament to be built in Kutaisi. Image pulled from Radio Free Europe

It’s a pattern that has become all too common in Georgia.

Misha wanted tear down something old and historic and build something big and gaudy in its place. Who needs a World War II memorial? The new Georgia needs a huge new parliament building that looks like a bubble. History, reverence, and respect for the dead were in the way, and besides, it’s not like Georgians are paying for it anyway, the Western donors can pick up the bill.

Normally this would have been just one more episode of silliness for the hyperactive Georgian president. Tragically, however, this time Misha’s silliness proved fatal.

It all started with a sculptor who opened his mouth. Merab Berdzenishvili, 82, who has been an open critic of Saakashvili from the start, already lost prime location of his statue of David the Builder, Georgia’s most revered historical figure. Several years ago it was moved from central Tbilisi to the median of a highway in the outskirts of town by presidential order.

Then, with Saakashvili planning to move the Georgian parliament to the central Georgian city of Kutaisi (because I guess there’s something wrong with the parliament’s current building, pictured below), a new opportunity to stick it to Berdzenishvili presented itself.

The Georgian parliament building in downtown Tbilisi during the opposition sit-in protests in June.

Misha decided that Georgia’s new Epcot Center Parliament had to be put on the site of Georgia’s largest World War II memorial, which was coincidentally designed by that pesky sculptor.

Even those that supported the move of the parliament to Kutaisi saw the destruction of the monument as unnecessary and likely as just a part of Misha’s pissing match with any and all human annoyances. The coup de grace? The demolition was set to take place on the president’s 42nd birthday.

The Glory Memorial, designed and Merab Berdzenishvili. Image pulled from Radio Free Europe.

Nevermind the fact that the Soviet-era monument was an important symbol of respect and gratitude to the 300,000 Georgians killed in World War II (a significant number for a country whose modern-day population is 4 million). Nevermind that there was plenty of open land around the city of Kutaisi that didn’t have a large monument to the fallen on it that had been declared a UNESCO heritage site. The plan proceeded.

But the public reacted. Protests were planned. The media marked their calenders. The opposition declared they would attempt to block the demolition with a demonstration on site, and the ego-centric, but media savvy president realized this might not go as well as planned from a PR standpoint, so he called an audible.

On Dec. 19, two days before the announced date of demolition, residents of Kutaisi were hurriedly told to avoid the monument site, and the towering memorial came down.

pulled from Radio Free Europe.

As residents watched as the edifice’s base exploded and the several-hundred foot structure slumped down into a cloud of dust, a Eka Tsutskhvashvili-Jincharadze and her 8-year-old daughter Nino were struck and killed by large chunk of debris standing at what they were told was the appropriate safety distance (in the courtyard of their home).

Someone standing near them captured the tragedy on his cellphone (warning, the content is hard to watch, but I recommend enduring it in order to understand the extent of the senselessness).

Really, there isn’t much more to say.

More innocents killed for nothing in a power scandal that is indefensible, but sadly familiar and unsurprising in Saakashvili’s Georgia. Ex-foreign minister and opposition leader Salome Zurabishvili said Georgians are “barbarians” if they are to accept such a event, which is ugly every way you look at it.

Sozar Subari, the former ombudsman and a member of the opposition Alliance for Georgia, laid the blame for the incident squarely on the president’s shoulders.

“These two deaths are the result of one person’s whim, and Georgia is becoming a victim of this person’s whims,” Subari said. “It was the whim of this person to start the war last year, and then lose it in a shameful manner.”

The Russians also chimed in.

“This sacrilege…is yet another disgraceful act by the current leadership in Tbilisi in its maniacal drive to erase the historical memories of its own people,” a Russian Foreign Ministry statement said.

For more images of the memorial and the aftermath of its destruction, check out Radio Free Europe’s online photo gallery.