Chapter 8 - Invisible Connections: On Uncertainty and the (Re)production of Opaque Politics in the Republic of Georgia

Summary

Every citizen of Georgia, no matter where he or she lives, has the same opportunities […] Georgia is moving forward […] Our students are accepted to the universities without bribes today… You probably remember how much it cost to apply for the law faculty, or the medical institute. How much it cost to apply for the agricultural university. We all have experienced that… Everyone knows that the government will do everything for people to come for treatment in these hospitals. If the government were only to care about its family members then a small clinic would be enough.

—President Saakashvili at the opening of a hospital in Gori, January 2012

The opening quote from 2012 illustrates how, according to then president Mikheil Saakashvili, the Georgian government had consolidated democracy and eradicated corruption over the previous decade (Saakashvili 2012). From this perspective Georgia was rapidly moving towards a bright future, increasingly distancing itself from its dark and corrupt past. Officially corruption did decline dramatically after the Rose Revolution that brought Saakashvili and his United National Movement (UNM) to power (Jones 2013, 195–98). Hence, in the years following the revolution Georgia was in many ways considered a textbook example of the rapid development of good governance and transparency in public institutions (see Kbiltsetskhlashvili 2008; Companjen 2010).

Commencing fieldwork in the provincial town of Gori in 2010, I was initially determined to get in contact with the local municipality to obtain official statistics and figures about the town I would be studying. I asked around. Most of the people I addressed seemed puzzled, such as Olga, a middle-aged woman:

KATRINE: I will need some statistics from the municipality. Just the basic facts and figures about Gori – population, unemployment and so on. Maybe you can give me advice on how to get a hold of that?[…]