Democracy in Georgia has taken a turn for the worst. While ordinary people still hope that it will work in the interests of the majority, democracy is often perceived as a political system that benefits only political, cultural and economic elites. Here, democracy has been misinterpreted and distorted, becoming cynical, absurd and irrelevant.
Postcommunist prophets
In the years since transition, Georgia’s academic and political elites have been taught that democracy is possible only under a capitalist system—without a strong free market, there is no democracy. For them, the only constituent principle of democracy is individual rights; the market and individualism have become synonyms of democracy.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, in Georgia, we witnessed another catastrophe—the moral collapse of postcommunist political and academic elites. The attitudes of political parties, think-tanks and universities towards our transition to capitalism leave much to be desired.
