Georgia
Georgia: Clashes outside parliament on third protest night – DW – 12/01/2024
Georgians protesting the government’s decision to delay European Union membership talks clashed with security forces outside parliament in the capital Tbilisi on Saturday evening.
Thousands of protesters took to the streets for the third night in a row. The protests, which have seen over a hundred arrested, have been the biggest since the ruling Georgian Dream party claimed victory in October’s contested parliamentary elections.
What happened at the protests?
Police fired tear gas, rubber bullets and used water cannons in an effort to disperse the rallies. Protesters outside parliament used fireworks, with flames reportedly seen coming out of a parliament building window.
Some of the protesters set up barricades on Tbilisi’s main avenue. Others on the steps of parliament burned an effigy of Bidzina Ivanishvili, the Dream party’s founder and Georgia’s richest man.
“I am afraid — I won’t hide it — that many people will get injured, but I am not afraid to stand here,” 39-year-old Tamar Gelashvili told the French AFP news agency near the parliament building earlier in the day.
The Interior Ministry said that “the actions of some individuals present at the protest became violent shortly after the demonstration began.”
“Police will respond appropriately and in accordance with the law to every violation,” it said.
Protests also took place in various other cities across Georgia.
Earlier on Saturday, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze had accused the pro-EU opposition of plotting a revolution, while the State Security Service said political parties were trying to “overthrow the government by force.”
EU membership is a highly popular goal in the former Soviet republic. Tbilisi is flooded with EU flags, often placed by residents at their own windows.
“The people of Georgia are trying to protect their constitution, trying to protect their country and the state, and they are trying to tell our government that rule of law means everything,” protester Tina Kupreishvili told the Reuters news agency outside parliament.
rmt/wd (AFP, Reuters)
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Kirk Fordice-like Rick Jackson is sounding a whole lot like Daniel Kirkwood Fordice as he tries to be elected Georgia’s next governor.
Fordice came out of nowhere — actually, Vicksburg is somewhere but you know what I mean — in 1991 to become a two-term Mississippi governor.
He had money but nothing like Jackson, a billionaire businessman who’s also trying to emerge from nowhere politically to win Georgia’s top office.
“The establishment hated Trump, because they couldn’t control him. They are going to hate me,” Jackson says in an ad for Georgia’s Republican Primary on May 19, sounding like one of my favorite Mississippi governors — Fordice, because of his unpredictable personality (he could vilify or charm you, all in one sentence), not his politics. He died in 2004 of cancer.
I stood by a cafe entrance one morning, waiting to cover a Fordice speech. When he appeared, I stuck out my hand to shake his. “I’m not shaking your damn hand. You’re part of the problem down there (referring to the newspaper),” he told me, smiling and moving on.
Jackson rose to become one of economic giant-Georgia’s wealthiest people. He came from Atlanta’s rough midtown area, ending up in the foster care system. He left college due to poor financial circumstances.
The 71-year-old Jackson wormed his way into the dynamic city’s business scene in the late 1970s, mostly of the healthcare variety with mixed success before starting a workforce staffing and services company and later an antibiotics manufacturing plant. He turned those businesses into billion-dollar enterprises.
“It’s God’s money,” he said in rural Blakely, and he’s been charitable with it.
Jackson doesn’t try to hide his vast wealth. His family lives in a 48,000-square-foot mansion at Cumming, a place of nearly 100,000 people near Atlanta in Forsyth County, which once promoted its almost all-white population as a virtue.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Bill Torpy recently wrote that Jackson will spend a ton of his own money in seeking another mansion, the one occupied by Georgia’s governor. Torpy noted that present Lt. Gov. Burt Jones was once heavily favored to win the primary race, but he’s fallen behind Jackson’s bold money bid.
“The one-time front-runner in the Republican primary (Jones) has been relegated to No. 2, the result of a $100 million Mack truck running him over.
Rick Jackson, a billionaire healthcare tycoon, a man with a sly smile and reptilian gaze, is the guy driving that truck,” Torpy wrote.
The GOP field includes Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, who spurned Trump’s demand to find 11,780 votes that would’ve allowed him to win Georgia in 2020.
Fordice was effective with some bombastic rhetoric during his run for governor, but I don’t remember it reaching the histrionic level employed by Jackson. In a major ad blitz, often referencing (Georgia college student) Laken Riley’s murderer, Jackson promises that unauthorized immigrants committing violent crimes will be “deported or departed … any questions?”
In another ad, Jackson growled, “Like President Trump, I don’t owe anybody anything, and like you, I’m sick of career politicians.”
Fordice spent only $1 million to get himself elected Mississippi’s governor. He somewhat sneaked up on the establishment, riding no escalator to the first floor of his Vicksburg concrete river mats-contracting office to declare his intentions. Who could ever forget his announcement seeking the governorship that ran on page 5 of the Clarion Ledger?
Recent polling ahead of Georgia’s May primaries for governor shows the eventual Republican nominee faces a strong Democrat in the November general election, most likely former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. That’ll require another whole pot of money.
— Mac Gordon, a native of McComb, is a retired Mississippi newspaperman. He can be reached at macmarygordon@gmail.com.
Gulfstream recently announced a $5 million investment in Georgia education, welcoming students and leaders to its Savannah headquarters.
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