Martin Smith · Teacher at Language Centre (LC) Georgia Visa and Residency Issues: not so much a 9/11 event as a 10/10 one. I am confident that Mr Garibashvili will listen to the arguments now being prepared by the foreign residents of Georgia. We are intending to prepare an analysis of the apparent defects of the new law as well as of the broader implications of the policy, which will go direct to the MFA, at an Open Meeting of the International Organization, Transparency International. The relevant meeting is scheduled for this Friday 10/10 at 12; and *so many are the interested parties that it will have to be moved to a Tbilisi hotel*. I think it is important to take a step backwards and sympathetically try to understand the pressures facing Georgia in trying to define for herself an independent and yet cordial role with both the EC; and vis a vis neighbours such as Russia, Israel, Iran, India and the Silk Road former countries such as Kazakhstan, which can be easily reached by air. Investment and tourists from all these countries make for a stimulating environment, as Florian makes clear; but preventing abuses could easily have been targeted in a more specific way: up till last year it was common to meet people from such exotic places in Tbilisi, as well as Chinese teachers who came to give astonishing courses in Georgian Public Schools under TLG; and South African farmers of immense know-how and practical skills, huge strapping two-plus-metre-high lads in shorts, handy with a tractor and a shotgun, who were hoping to instruct Georgian farmers in how to move on from an agricultural system which Soviet collectivisation had made uncompetitive, to the hill-farming practices of the immense and inscrutable veldt. These latter were forced to retreat...alas. This year however, tourism is down by half and looking at faces on the metro or here in Bolnisi,one can be forgiven for thinking that Georgia is returning to the isolated and depressed state (psychologically I mean) that it seemed to be in when I arrived four years ago. Concurrently with the new visa rules have been rules restricting foreign ownership of land, which have already had negative impact on the Georgian wine industry, and which have been successfully challenged in the court. To be fair, they are due to run out. It is entirely pardonable that a country which has suffered 70 years of manipulation from the Soviet system may lack perfect pitch in descrying the harmonies of western democracy; and in the process of apparently palliating the countrys too-individual approach, over-egg the khachapuri in the direction of conformity... But I am confident Georgia in the end will be herself : a caravanserai, an entrpot, a staging post on the silk road, even a place of cosmopolitan brilliance and ambition like Paris or Beirut or Alexandria in the old days. The entire world is waiting for such excitements to happen, to give some spice to what must so far be the most boring century on record (if one excepts the ninth century B.C!) - the twenty-first…! Georgian dynamism and creativity is such that this country does not need to model itself on other less sober, less fully-frontal, paradoxically even less hospitable countries. The quality of Georgian artists is amazing. The technical brio with which the new administration operates, too, is impressive: video-conferencing is forseen in the visa application process, thus making the whole thing more like YouTube; and as painless as possible… and along with the competence, that dash of indolence in everything, which is vastly appealing! An ancient instinct seems to allow Georgians to hold these opposites in equipoise… Georgia is strong enough to go her own way and argue -construct - her own destiny; but she is under pressure from all sides; and naturally timid to bring the debate into the open and do as her history and instincts tell her. The foreigners time has come…! Our love for and constancy towards this ancient and remarkable country, co-evel with Greece in that mythological order which underlines our common and deepest symbol, Europe, is not in question. It may be ironic if we, the foreigners, are cast in the role of Three Hundred Aragvelians standing up for the identity of this ancient, sacrosanct, citadel-like territory and the true spiritual values which attach to it; but if so, let it be: we are equal to the task! Did not many,from far afield, after all, have an irrational love for Jerusalem in the Middle Ages? Including - very notably - Tamar and her ministers. That open-minded, cosmopolitan, enriching, osmotic and transformative Georgia of old! The medieval world is just a hairsbreadth away when you are in Georgia, as a visit to Vardzia shows... To experience it is precisely which the most discerning tourists come…, That precious part of the national identity must not be overlooked, but promoted and understood, and as the national treasure, presented far afield! The overtones and echoes keep on coming. We pray for you, we implore you, we love you unconditionally, Sakartvelo! So...please hear the voices of your truest friends; and have the courage to be yourself. We will back you every inch of the way: until our bleached bones lie co-interred with yours in your hilltop cemeteries. (I wish I could say that in Georgian!) We need each other: *mechanisms which harmonize this co-operation and seal this trust must be arrived at….* Gaumarjos sakartvelos!
Posted on: Tue, 07 Oct 2014 11:42:00 +0000
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