“What happened in April reminded us of the fragility of the situation. In these 20 years, very little has been changed,” – stated Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Switzerland to Armenia, Lukas Gasser (in the photo) at the “Caucasus-2015” international conference held in Yerevan. The ambassador noticed that the Caucasus was an important direction for his country since the beginning of his diplomatic activity as they need reliable partners in the region whose stability is important for his country. To note that Switzerland is an OSCE Minsk Group member. Giorgi Kanashvili, Executive Director of the “Caucasian House” Research Center, presented the developments of his country Georgia in 2015 by describing them “interesting.” He noted that the political life in Georgia is characterized to be active in the last 4 years, sometimes even with “hysterical outbursts.” “We are having parliamentary elections and I think that we must put a stress on it. The most interesting one took place at the end of last year when Garibashvili announced his resignation,” – said Giorgi Kanashvili, reminding Gharibashvili’s statement that thanks to his tenure, an economic growth of the country has been recorded and the media had become freer. The speaker is surprised that after the mentioned achievements, Gharibashvili resigned. “He explains his resignation by the formation of a new political culture in the country. However, one of the true reasons for Gharibashvili’s resignation was the discontent of the public with his administration, he was quite young and was unable to worked with Margvelashvili. Also, he had strained relationship with the “Georgian Dream” ruling party. But malicious tongues are saying that he was involved in corruption and Bidzina Ivanishvili was displeased.”
Unlike Gharibashvili, the current prime minister, according to a few months observations of the expert, is “more constructive and is trying to build a positive relationship with other parties.” “In terms of economic development, there are no particular breakthroughs. Approximately, a three percent economic growth was reported, local currency (lari) is stabilizing, no one understands the reason, perhaps it is the elections. The unemployment has dropped by 1.7 percent and the wages have gone up. In any case, compared with the neighboring countries, life in Georgia is more democratic,” – opines Giorgi Kanashvili.
Nelly GRIGORYAN
