Looks like a result!

It seems, on current opinion polls, that Dalia Grybauskaite, the current EU Budget Commissioner, may have won the presidential election in the first round of voting - the most recent estimate (19.00 hrs) was 67.5%, well over the 50% required to avoid a run-off.

One of her advantages, apart from being a superbly intelligent politician, is that she has been out of Lithuania for five years, and not involved in any of the shenanigans that have been going on in the last few years. She threw her hat into the ring in February, after the small riot over the Government's handling of the economic crisis (they are tightening everyone's belt, so no wonder that the economy is shrinking fast).

She had to overcome some obstacles, though; over her sexual orientation - she is an unmarried woman and there have been rumours over exactly who she might prefer - she said that she was not a lesbian. Can you believe someone having to state that??

Then over her nationality - this blonde woman has a father with a Greek first name, Polikarpas (which is incidentally also the name of the chap who my road in Georgia was named after, Polikarpe Kakabadze - no doubt about links between Greece and Georgia, apart from the Salomes and Medeas of the Georgian world). Someone legally challenged her, and she had to place hers and her mother's birth certificates in the internet to prove that she is a true Lithuanian. The question was never clarified whether the challenger was talking about ethnicity or citizenship....

But at last we may have a president who is not only untainted by scandal (if there were any, the Lithuanian media would find it), and one who has a pulse and a true close connection to the country, her absence in Europe notwithstanding. That was 5 years, not 50 years as in the case of Mr Adamkus, for all the good egg that he is.

Boomsday

Absolutely not a cultural novel, 'Boomsday' by Christopher Buckley (author of 'Thank you for Smoking' which might have a similar focus), is an all-American, very funny in a wise-cracking sort of way novel about the machinations of government in the US. Though these could be the same machinations in the UK, especially in relation to party donors.

It's about a young woman who is annoyed about the huge social security bill for the baby boomers (of whom I am one) who will need to be supported by the under-30s from now and for a long time. Working in public relations, she has a pretty good idea on how to get people fired up, and starts, through her blog, a series of attacks on gated communities for the elderly. This snowballs, and snowballs, and through very close connections with a senator she develops a bill to introduce voluntary transitioning (ie suicide) for people aged seventy or over, in return for tax breaks. This gets everyone in a tizzy, and from here on in all hell breaks loose, with the churches, her estranged father, the president and all sorts of other people piling in, plotting and counterplotting against each other, blackmailing, promising and undoing promises and so on. A typical few months in US government.

The style takes a bit of getting used to, and some of the jokes are just a bit 'oh aren't we so clever to have thought of this one?'. It's very 2006 US; not subtle and not for everyone. The events are of the kind that you read about in the Guardian every day. Is it like 'West Wing'? I don't know, not having seen it. Like it's cover, the book is brash, bold, and a bit vulgar (but also typically American, without explicit sex). Would make a great airport book, though - and an easy read for a day spent sick in bed.

I hope the US citizenship knows, after West Wing and all the other shows, that this is how its government operates.

Fair and Open Elections - Everywhere

This article in today's Guardian talks about fraud, bribery and intimidation in Sunday's parliamentary election in Russia. People are being rounded up at workplaces and made to go and vote in a particular polling station; they are told they might lose their jobs if they don't vote for Putin's party (which is actually quite popular, so does he need this?).

Never mind; the Georgian election will be open and fair, just as the Lithuanian president urged them to be. So it'll be pure rumour that people in the army have been told that their personal loans will be paid off if they vote a particular way and that the leading party approaches businesses asking them for money or else they will be closed down (they need to get the money for those loans somewhere). And the fact that people go round houses and places of employment asking their neighbours and fellow employees to sign that they will vote in a particular way, is pure imagination, no?

Will the former Soviet Union ever get out of this immoral morass? I'm glad I live in a country where such things are not quite so possible any more (though we do get some duffers as politicians sometimes...)

At death's door...

that's democracy and press freedom in Georgia. The president has now resigned, in accordance with the election process, and now another TV station, Maestro, has been closed. Apparently it's an entertainment channel (cable), but it was closed just before its one politics/investigative journalism show.

Oh dear, the credit in the world community. It's going down and down.

The credit of the Lithuanian president, at the end of his presidential career, is only going up. He is now European Statesman of the Year, for brokering a deal with Poland which was ready to go for a battle with the EU. Apparently the Polish president tells anyone who wants to get a deal with him, to speak to the Lithuanian President first. Adamkus was in Tbilisi a week ago, telling them to behave themselves and be open and fair in their elections so the president can have a proper mandate ...no-one seems to have listened.

I hardly leave the country...

...Georgia, that is, and all hell breaks out! Again the multitudes were marching, this time to call for the reinstatement of the TV station Imedi, which the authorities had closed down at the start of the state of emergency. 'Closed down' is not quite the appropriate word, given that the equipment and even the employees' private cars were smashed up. Will they get compensation? Not until the courts go against the government, and in the most recent court case about this the judge(s) confirmed that the closure had been correct. Hmmm. The station is (was? there may have been a very recent change of ownership) owned by Badri Patarkatsishvili, a multimillionaire who made his fortune in Russia (I'm never quite sure about multimillionaires who make their fortune in Russia), as well as News International, Rupert Murdoch's outfit. Which of course would make anyone with any sense of quality close down the station, but the question was about free speech, not about quality of broadcasting. Since I don't have any TV in Georgia, and would not understand it anyway, I cannot really comment on quality...

Meanwhile, electioneering of the crudest kind is going on. Unbelievable how naive the politicians are, and what they think of the intelligence of their electorate (a negative IQ). They have promised to raise pensions from 1 January (election is on 5 January) - potentially this might have an undesirable effect on the poverty benefits many people get, but they might not notice it until after the election. In addition, a programme has been announced, whereby 100,000 unemployed Georgians will get a 200 lari stipend to get 2 weeks work experience between 15 and 31 December (the monthly minimum wage is 38 laris); possibly in addition afterwards they will get another 250 laris. Pity the poor employment office, having to find work experience places for 100,000 people within the next two weeks; someone has to interview people and place them roughly in the right type of work. Are there enough formal places of employment for 100,000 people at all in Georgia?

Still, the pensioners and these 100,000 people and their families should swing the election, no?

It's as if the government is playing monopoly.

Turkmenbashi and Abramovich leave their posts

Just heard that the President of Turkmenistan has died of a heart attack. He is the first to die of those post-soviet leaders (except maybe the chap in Azerbaijan, but he died slowly and could appoint an heir) who made themselves full dictators, with a plan to run the country for life. This he certainly did, though perhaps his life was shorter than planned. As the article says, he called everything after himself, from the Turkmenbashi (a name he adopted) kindergarten to the Turkmenbashi factory.

Only a few weeks ago I had chatted to a Turkmen lady living in Vilnius, who told me that the pensions in Turkmenistan had recently been cut, on account that the families should be responsible for their relatives. He also abolished the opera and ballet since they were not within the spirit of his nation. At one stage it was proposed that young women marrying foreigners had to pay about 50,000 dollars to the state to be allowed to leave, but apparently this could not be implemented realistically. Pictures of him, and a statue in gold, were everywhere. Turkmenistan has huge gas and oil reserves and is a very rich country, but where all that wealth goes, no-one knows. The Gross Domestic Product per person, according to the CIA world fact book, is 7900 USD per person per year. My friend's mother's pension was, before the cuts, 600 USD per year - a good pension, as she said....

And Mr Abramovich, owner of Chelsea football club and a large chunk of Siberia, where he is governor, is giving up politics. I hope this is good for his health. The deal was, according to some sources, that as a governor the Russia government could not do him over like Mr Khodorkovsky, owner of Yukos Oil , who had intended to be a presidential candidate in 2008, but who was thrown into prison on tax evasion charges about 2 years ago; his company was stripped from him, sold in a rather dubious transaction to another company, and the foreign parts of the company were dissolved. Apparently Mr Abramovich has sold most of his assets in Russia and intends to live in Europe, possibly London. He's probably between a rock and a hard place now - he will definitely not please Mr Putin. Will he have to look over his shoulder and into his teacups for the rest of his life?

It'll be cold...

this winter in Georgia. That nasty Gazprom is intending to double the gas price for Georgia. Which would make it almost double as expensive as the same gas in Armenia, and 50% more than Ukraine. As they say - it's a free market, unaffected by politics.