My dad’s freer than your dad!

I’ve now been back in Sakartvelo (the Republic of Georgia for the uninitiated) for a week, so I’ve been getting updated on the happenings of this cooky place.

While reading up, the front page of one English-language Tbilisi paper caught my eye. The Weekly Georgian Journal was apparently quite proud of the fact that Georgia is “up” and Russia is “down” in Freedom House’s newly released report on “freedom in the world.” As I mentioned in my previous posting I’m not a huge fan of Freedom House’s oversimplified system of quantifying such an nuanced concept as freedom in countries around the world by a single scale of measure. Perhaps its just that the Bush administration forever ruined the word “freedom” for me by misusing it in every conceivable way for eight years until it was rendered meaningless.

Semantics aside, this cover is a more than a bit silly. It should first be noted that Freedom House has not actually released its full findings yet. They have only issued a press release outlining the changes in terms of where every country in the world falls in its brilliantly complex three-category freedom barometer: free, partly free and not free. In terms of those qualifications, both countries are in the same place they were last year; Russia is still “not free” and Georgia is still “partly free.” Whatever that means.

However, if you look closer at the ratings of the two countries since FH began compiling them in 2002 (conveniently just before the Rose Revolution), you see that Georgia can’t pat themselves on the back much more than the Russia can.

Beyond the organization’s blanket freedom label, FH also gives each country a score based on political rights and civil liberties of citizens in each country. In 2002, with Shevarnadze in power in Georgia and Putin in his first term in Russia, Georgia and Russia had nearly identical ratings. Both were “party free” at the time (with the first sentence of the 2002 report justifying Russia’s “partly free” status by their willingness to contribute to America’s “global war on terror” and) with Georgia scoring better than Russia on political rights and civil liberties by one point each.

What’s changed since 2002 you ask? Well, Russia lost its “partly free” status in 2005 (a time that coincided with Putin’s public falling out with Dubya) and the county has since been totally devoid of that precious freedom stuff, although its ratings have barely changed. It scored one point lower on political rights in 2009 than in 2002, and was also adorned with a “downward trend” status. Not a huge surprise as Putin has gradually entrenched himself as the leader of a one-party Russian government.

Much has changed in Georgia since 2002 though, right? In 2003, Western-educated and Soros-funded Mikheil Saakashvili took the nation by storm with speeches demanding openness and democracy. A bloodless revolution took place, and a flourishing pro-Western government was born. So what are Georgia’s ratings now six years later?

The exact same as in the last year of Shevarnadze regime, which was notorious for corruption, election fraud, and brutal repression of dissent. The more things change the more they stay the same. Not only is Georgia still only “partly free,” its ratings on political rights and civil liberties are the exact same and it has also earned a “downward trend” status.

Nonetheless, great point Weekly Georgian Journal! Like with most of Georgia’s problems, it’s so much harder to have a serious discussion about moving forward than to simply point out that Russia is worse. Freedom House doesn’t really give out effort points anyway.