Misha, Visit Gardabani!

Manon Bokuchava, Kvemo Kartli

President Saakashvili often takes foreign guests to various regions or cities of Georgia where he shows them recently-built buildings, fountains and boasts with different achievements. One of the towns which will not be good for similar trips in Georgia is Gardabani, Kvemo Kartli region. The only nice buildings are office of the National Movement and two colorful residential buildings for so-called new IDPs. The program of renovating the building facades and reconstruction of roads has not reached Gardabani yet.

“We always have wet handkerchiefs with us in order to clean shoes when we arrive in Tbilisi; in Gardabani our shoes get muddy,” said student Namila from Gardabani. The central road of Gardabani looks like chess board. Seeing the roads leading to houses and pavements you will have feeling that you are walking along village roads.

“What entertainment can be here? We have culture house but we organize concerts there,” said the youth standing in the center of Gardabani. Locals have much free time because of unemployment. However, unlike different towns the locals can have cattle and cultivate plots.

The novelty in Gardabani’s life is IDPs who settled here after the war in August of 2008. IDPs have good relation with local Azeri population. Head of Gardabani district office of the Red Cross Shorena Tsiklauri implements various programs for IDP children.

“Within one of our projects, we distributed 12 IDP children in Azeri families for one week. The goal of the project was to support these people to come closer. They still continue close relationship and friendship,” said Shorena Tsiklauri.

In accordance to the 2009 annual report of the European Center for Minority Issues  43, 72 % of local population is ethnic Azeri people; 0, 93 % are ethnic Armenians and 0, 21 % are Greek. There is no tense relationship between different ethnic groups in the district; but there are issues that have equal explanations for everybody. It is about the government – Gardabani is the zone where the president does not have real rival. Locals do not recognize any other party but the National Movement. You can see only the activists of the ruling party even in the local self-governmental institutions. Gardabani district governor Zviad Epitashvili is one of them and he dislikes journalists.

Cleaning activities of Gardabani is another topic of big discoveries. In general, it is acute problem for every town in the country; however, you can see the rubbish-bins of the soviet period only in this town. Locals call the rusty bins standing next to each other “Heritage from Stalin”.

It will be a miracle if you hear representatives of ethnic minorities criticizing the government. Unfortunately, I could not hear it either.

“We have electricity and water supplies. The gas is not supplied everywhere, but they promise and let us wait,” said Eljan Mamedov from Gardabani.

Most part of the population gets information from Azerbaijan channels because they do not know Georgian. Goods from Azerbaijan are mostly sold in local shops. The only café which I saw in the town has flags of both Georgia and Azerbaijan on the window. Friendship of the two countries is often demonstrated here in similar ways.

If a foreign guest visits Gardabani, he should not go beyond the square close to the district administration building. Otherwise, we will receive bad mark in the development of the self-governance system.