Saakashvili’s Report Card

The FINANCIAL — Today, Georgians across the country will be casting their votes to decide the makeup of the next parliament of Georgia.

They will be choosing between an eight year old government born from revolution and a series of opposition parties, one of which is new and seemingly competitive. 

As today’s date approached, polls were published at an ever increasing pace.  Many of these were funded by the very parties who used them as evidence for their popularity.  With all this campaign money flying around, it has become difficult to know whether a poll conducted in Georgia can be trusted. 

In fact, we fully expect that exit polls published today will contradict each other, with results skewed to the party who hired each firm. We at GORBI have a strict policy of not working for political entities within the Georgian government or for parties themselves, and have turned down repeated requests to participate in this furious numbers game. 

It is for this reason that this column deals primarily with social issues, having only directly discussed political candidates once; we conduct social attitude surveys, crime surveys, medical studies and the like. We still ask opinion questions on the political process, but aim to uncover more broadly useful opinions than “who will you vote for?”  Without further ado.

The Survey — This week, we will discuss the public’s opinion on President Saakashvili’s handling of specific issues.  We will see what Georgians feel he has done well, and in which ways they feel he has failed.   Keep in mind, this survey was completed at the end of August.  With the volatile political environment, public opinion has undoubtedly changed over the past week.  However, many of the opinions on economic and political policy are not likely to have changed drastically in a month.

To make the data easier to visualize, we’ve subtracted the number of people who felt that the President had performed his duties related to an issue “fairly poorly” or “definitely poorly” from those who felt he did fairly or definitely well.  The result is a sort of grade: 100 means the public is completely satisfied with his job and -100 is completely unsatisfied.  Between 10% and 20% of respondents said they didn’t know how to answer each question.  These people were left out of the “grade.”

Passing Grades — Georgians nearly universally appreciate the effort Saakashvili has made in tourism development all across the country, so gave him a 66. Likewise, they value fight against corruption that he led shortly after taking office, giving him a 65.  He also received pretty good scores in garnering investments (59) and in his foreign policy in general (49).

From this point forward, his marks remain in the green but have slipped considerably.  Misha’s policies toward economic reform and privatization earned a 26 and 25 respectively, and domestic policy nearly the same (24).

The last two passing grades the President received at the end of August cannot be considered final.  The first grade, an 18 for human rights, has certainly changed in light of the recent prison torture videos released.  The people marching up and down Rustaveli this week would surely demand he retake the class. 
Finally, Georgians have given him a barely passing grade at ensuring fair elections (6).  We will no doubt see a more definitive score after his final exam today.

Failing Grades — Even with the attitude of hope immediately after the Rose Revolution, no one could have reasonably expected a polar change in 8 years.  Despite several areas of marked improvement, Saakashvili is still failing in the minds of Georgians in his fight against poverty (-29) and unemployment (-38). 

The two worst grades the president has received, though, stem from the most visceral setbacks in Georgia’s recent history.  Georgians feel that far too little has been done to settle relations with their previous Russian invaders, and gave Saakashvili a -42 in this respect. 

The worst grade is closely related to 2008 as well. The President has failed most miserably at returning Georgia’s borders to their original state and recovering the occupied territories, receiving a -47.

Though it has been mentioned already, I will reiterate that this poll was completed 4 weeks ago.  It has been said that one year in Georgia is twenty years elsewhere, and this holds true for shifts in public opinion as well.  We can only be sure of the effect of recent events on public opinion when we complete our post-election poll in a few weeks.  As GORBI has been working in Georgia since 1991, throughout three separate regimes, you can be sure that we will still be here polling regardless of today’s results.