One thought on “TBLPOD20oct2016”

1. The MEME this week is a photo essay by Jake Borden about the internally-displaced families living in an abandoned military hospital on Tbilisi’s outskirts. These photos have been online for awhile but are still getting a lot of attention; we were tipped off by our Santa Barbara correspondent Jonathan Kulick.
   Link: http://bit.ly/2eafcf5

   US Citizens are encouraged to vote in the Presidential Election on the 8th of November. Those living in Georgia can easily register and mail a completed ballot. Check out Vote.org for more information, and encourage your friends and relatives living outside the US to vote. The below link to the website of the US Embassy in Georgia also has a lot of good info.
   Link: https://georgia.usembassy.gov/rm092116.html

   THINGS TO READ

   Social Science in the Caucasus publishes their data analysis of the parliamentary election results. They find the results were roughly as accurate as those from 2012, so not perfect but broadly free and fair.
   Link: http://bit.ly/2drRkgw

   Voice of America’s Anna Kalandadze interviews Laura Linderman of the Atlantic Council. She say it isn’t a good sign for Georgian democracy that Otsneba has such a big majority, and that the public will be best off if the ruling party tries to work with the National Movement.
   Link: http://bit.ly/2ekTimo

   Tornike Zurabishvili writes his post-election analysis for The Clarion. He says the free and fair elections are a good sign for Georgia’s democracy, but it’s troubling that the Republicans and Free Democrats did poorly while the Alliance of Patriots got into Parliament. The pro-Western voices in parliament will be weaker than they were before, and the relationship between government and opposition will probably be more polarized.
   Link: http://bit.ly/2eTWWFN

   European Policy Center analyst Amanda Paul writes about the elections. She’s optimistic, arguing that the triumph of policy over personality means Georgia is becoming a mature democracy. She doesn’t discuss the issue of Otsneba winning a constitutional majority, though.
   Link: http://bit.ly/2eIJZyX

   Stephen Jones expresses a more pessimistic view for Open Democracy. He calls it an oligarchic election dominated by the interests of elites and confusion created by professional PR managers. However, he said Georgia has made enough progress that it should be judged alongside the Western democracies, and not according to the low bar set by other post-Soviet countries.
   Link: http://bit.ly/2emaQkC

   Andrew North has an interactive piece of art journalism in EurasiaNet about the Eliava, an open-air hardware market in Tbilisi. It’s a digitized sketch of the market, complete with audio and quotes from some of the market’s proprietors. Check it out, chances are you haven’t seen anything else like it.
   Link: http://bit.ly/2e8DW4P

   Now that the new parliament is on its way, we can make assessments about the previous one. Transparency International, the hardest-working NGO in the Caucasus, publishes its assessment of the previous parliament. They held 231 plenary sessions and passed 1505 laws. They passed some laws the organization views positively, like the Law on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination.
   Link: http://bit.ly/2drSkRY

   The Calvert Journal introduces us to the best party spots in Eastern Europe. Tbilisi’s Bassiani Club makes the list.
   Link: http://bit.ly/2em9SVM

   Foreign Affairs has a piece about the Caspian Sea and what it means as a transportation corridor. The author, Bruno Macaes, travels from Alat in Azerbaijan to Turkmenbashi in Turkmenistan in a cargo ship. Both countries are hoping for the Trans-Caspian gas pipeline to be built, which would give Europe direct access to Central Asian gas.
   Link: http://bit.ly/2emTpir

   Jonathan Freedland writes in the New York Review of Books about Julian Assange and why he is apparently trying to help Donald Trump become the next President of the United States. Wikileaks is only releasing documents harmful to Hillary Clinton. Freedland thinks it might be a personal vendetta against Clinton.
   Link: http://bit.ly/2ezpsYS

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