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after the Rose Revolution is the best argument to refute this myth. However, the
strong political will of the new Georgian government proved that it is possible to
implement successful reforms even in such difficult conditions as Georgian.
I would like to stress out the main reasons why have been the Georgian
anti-corruption policies so successful. As in case of many anti-corruption
strategies, for instance, in Singapore, it is the strong political will of the
government. The key tool for the anti-corruption policies in Georgia was the
political will of the government, which did not only create some policies and left
them on the paper, but found a way to apply them in the severe realm of the
Georgian bureaucracy, criminal world and cultural peculiarities. The Georgian
government understood that it is not enough to establish harsh punishment for
those who are taking bribes or creating the situation of bribing. All of those
actions are just branches of a big tree with enormous roots underneath. Corruption
can be fought only in comprehensive way, using several instruments at the same
time. Low salaries of police, publish officials, administration made it inevitable to
refuse bribing as well as made it impossible to push those people to fight with
corruption. Increasing salaries for the police, civil servants and ministers made it
economically unnecessary to take risk by bribing. The new Georgian government
gave an opportunity to people to earn sufficient amount of money to have decent
lives. By decreasing the number of civil servants who actually only widen the
bureaucratic system making unnecessary paper work, the government could rise
salaries to the rest of the civil servants, what led to the growth of the quality of
their work. The simplification of issuing documents, creation of electronic data
bases, decreasing number of civil servants led to the decreasing possibility of
emergence of moments, when a person can misuse his position to gain benefits. In
order to decrease corruption on the low and middle level, there was a necessity to
implement economical reforms, privatization of the state property and
liberalization of the Georgian market. All of those reforms led to the result, when
the system started to work not because of shadow activities of criminal groups or
bribes to the public officials. It started to work because there were no obstacles for
sustainable growth anymore. At present moment, the Georgian citizens have a
transparent state, where each of the citizens acknowledges his responsibility in
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63
contrast to the previous Soviet-style system. The major feature for establishing the
government which would be able to implement such radical reforms was the
common similar thinking about state building of all the members of this
government. The ministers of Saakashvili government were young, educated in
the West or having other international experience, people who did not think about
the power and the career in the government, but were great specialist of their
realms. The common will to build a better system without corruption in their
motherland brought them together and contributed to the results that Georgia has
achieved today.
Definitely, the success of anti-corruption policies implemented by the
government of Saakashvili is very significant, however, there are some tendencies
that are not so positive. The Georgian citizens as well as some experts claim that
corruption has stayed on the top level of the government. The existence of elite
corruption has been proven by several examples which I have already described in
my thesis. Bringing back the quote by John Acton that the power corrupts, I
would argue that elite corruption would last till the time of formation of political
structure in Georgia. It was the first time, when the Georgian citizens have chosen
their government democratically, acknowledging the problems of the state, voting
for changes in the system
177
. Even during the mass dissatisfaction expressed by
citizens about drastic reforms executed in order to change the old system, the
citizens voted for Michael Saakashvili for the second time. It proves the
willingness of the Georgians to follow the chosen path from the old corrupt
system to the new one. Nowadays, there is a possibility for the Georgians to
change the government if they perceive it unproductive and ineffective. There is
more transparency in governmental actions. The cases of elite corruption are also
visible and known, so the potential to fight with this phenomenon is very high.
The Georgian lesson is striking and very important for the states of the
post-Soviet area, where the level of corruption is very high. The example of anti-
corruption policies can be used for the future elaboration of reforms in Russia,
177
Here I do not perceive the election of the president of Georgia Zviad Gamsakhurdia as non-
democratic. However, in my point of view, there were completely different circumstances in the
very beginning of the 90
th
. It was the time of open military conflict of Georgia with its separatist
regions.
C# Word - Paragraph Processing in C#.NET Add references: C# users can set paragraph properties and create content such as run, footnote, endnote and picture in a paragraph.
add jpg to pdf file; add an image to a pdf acrobat
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Ukraine and Belarus. The importance of the Georgian case resides in the
geographical location and common legacy of those countries. The USSR left the
cultural and traditional heritage binging these countries. Thereby, the results
brought by the Georgian reforms would have more possibility to be implemented
in the right way in the systems of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus.
As it is clear from the results of anti-corruption reforms in Georgia there is
no one prescription for corruption fight. Fighting with corruption contains
different “ingredients”. There is a necessity to have a good working and clear law
-
enforcement system, implement economic reforms, improve bureaucratic
apparatus in the state. All of this would lead to the decrease of corruption on a
daily basis. In order to elaborate such effective policies, there is a need to
establish a good government with the same state-building idea. It is impossible to
bring off any positive results with the dissonance in the political elite, while
everybody tries to gain something for himself, achieving their personal goals. The
reason of success of the Georgian anti-corruption policies lied in the ability of the
new government to create unity in their decision-making concerning the fight with
corruption. There were a lot of difficult steps during the process of reduction of
the level of corruption, for instance, the decision to arrest influential people for
corruption. Such steps require strong political decisions. Otherwise, any anti-
corruption strategy would not bring positive effects. Perhaps, it would lead to a
small changes in statistics, however, the major problem would be still unsolved. If
we compare Georgia to the other post-Soviet states, where anti-corruption reforms
also took place, one can see that in Georgia the decision of fighting corruption had
the major importance. The new government realized that without the decrease of
the level of corruption, the country could not achieve any improvement in other
sectors. This understanding led to the elaboration of mechanism that later allowed
to cover almost all problematic issues, including the organized crime. Even
though some of the reforms were not popular among the citizens, the government
did not stop implementing them, proving their strong will to fight the corruption
creating transparent system in the country. Michael Saakashvili created the
government that is not afraid to lose its popularity and votes in the next elections.
For the public official involved in the anti-corruption strategy, the major objective
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65
was to decrease the spread of corruption within the top-decision makers of the
country. Some instruments of fighting with corruption were drastic and painful for
the society. Large number of people lost their jobs. Nevertheless, there should be
the price for the efficiency of the policies. In order to create a new, transparent
and better working system, the Georgian government had to take hard steps,
because it could not implement “healthy” elements in the old, “sick”, Soviet
system. There a lot of examples of implemented anti-corruption policies, which
did not bring the expected results. There are two reasons for that. First of all, most
probably, there was not enough information about the actual roots of emerging
corruption. In that case, fight with corruption has been directed to the display of
the corruption, but not its real roots. The results of these actions would be the
decrease of corruption on the level of particular elements of the system, however,
it would come back later very fast. The second reason, the fight of corruption
would not touch the upper level of the government, influence people, criminal
groups. The Georgian lesson is a good example of the fight with corruption from
the top to the bottom perspective.
Summarizing my thesis, I would like to admit that the main goal of my
research has been achieved. The anti-corruption policies in Georgia implemented
after the Rose Revolution of 2003, have had very significant success. The
evidences of this success can be seen when a researcher visits Georgia or analyzed
the statistics published by independent international organizations. Personally for
myself, the major indicator of this enormous success of Georgia are the
testimonies of regular Georgian people who shared this opinion with me.
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66
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A
NNEX
By improving the dramatic working conditions of public officials, police,
courts, public institutions, new Georgian government increased the efficiency and
transparency of civil servants working results. Glass walls symbolize transparency
of new Georgian system.
Tbilisi Prosecutor’s Office
(photo from http://www.archdaily.com/244169/ministry-of-justice-architects-of-invention/
)
Ministry of Justice
(photo from http://www.archdaily.com/244169/ministry-of-justice-architects-of-invention/
)
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