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OC Media

Opinion | Georgia’s economy has failed; now it’s time to build factories

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Tato Khundadze is a lecturer in Inter­na­tion­al  Political Economy at the Georgian-American Uni­ver­si­ty and head of the Ana­lyt­i­cal Division at the Georgian Public Broad­cast­er.

Despite the many inter­na­tion­al economic indices sug­gest­ing Georgia is a great success story, most Georgians live in poverty. In a country where emi­gra­tion is rampant and half the pop­u­la­tion ekes out a living in agri­cul­ture, the gov­ern­ment needs to create new strate­gies to form a strong, indus­tri­al economy. [Read more…]

Analysis | The revolution will not be postponed: what does Pashinyan’s resignation really mean?

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Nikol Pashinyan (/gov.am)

Mikayel Zolyan is a historian and political analyst from Yerevan, Armenia. He teaches at the Brusov Uni­ver­si­ty of Languages and Social Sciences.

Armenian rev­o­lu­tion­ary leader Nikol Pashinyan has resigned as prime minister. While his goal is to eradicate the remnants of the old ruling elite in snap elections, many wonder if the former regime has what it takes to strike back.

[Read more…]

Opinion | Kashia doesn’t need support, queer people do

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Guram Kashia against the backdrop of anti-queer pro­test­ers (Back­ground photo: Giorgi Gogua /Liberali. Front photo: Reuters)

Dato Parulava is a staff writer at OC Media and Liberali.

In the face of abuse and threats over wearing a rainbow armband at a match, Georgia’s football captain, Guram Kashia, has received an unprece­dent­ed out­pour­ing of support. Regard­less of how much this support means for the queer community, we need to ask whether it is really for them, given that Kashia’s most prominent sup­port­ers have avoided men­tion­ing queer people entirely. [Read more…]

Opinion | Labelling Georgia’s far right ‘pro-Russian’ is reductionist and counterproductive

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‘March of Georgians’ in Tbilisi on 14 July 2017 (Luka Pertaia/OC Media)

Shota Kincha is OC Media’s staff writer.

Georgia’s liberal rights groups, neolib­er­al political parties, and their sup­port­ers in the media have con­sis­tent­ly tried to discredit neo-nation­al­ists by simply labelling them ‘pro-Russian’ — a misguided claim that only mirrors the opposite claim that rights groups follow an anti-Georgian ‘Soros agenda’. To address growing far-right author­i­tar­i­an­ism in Georgia, the under­ly­ing social and economic roots of the problem need to be addressed, as well as the legacy of author­i­tar­i­an­ism of the previous ruling class. [Read more…]

Opinion | Georgia should shake up its conflict policy, and recognise the Abkhazians and Ossetians as sides

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Sokhumi (Dominik K. Cagara /OC Media)

Paata Zakareishvili served as Georgia’s State Minister for Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and Civil Equality (formerly the minister of rein­te­gra­tion) from 2012–2016.

More than 25 years have passed since the beginning of Georgia’s armed conflicts — more than enough time for Georgian society and the political elite to assess what happened and why. It’s important that we evaluate where our progress stands in solving these conflicts, and whether we, as a country, need to reeval­u­ate our aims and revise our policy — whether the achieved result are accept­able or not and if not, what we can change. [Read more…]

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