Politico: “Georgia doesn’t have a ‘poor governance’ problem”

An article named ‘Georgia doesn’t have a ‘poor governance’ problem by parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Sophie Katsarava has been published by Politico.

The normally clear-eyed author of "Eastern Europe's problem isn't Russia" (published by POLITICO, on 20 February) must have misplaced his spectacles. His assertion that Russia is less of a threat to Georgia than “poor governance and abuse of informal power” is entirely misguided,’ the article preface says.

The author says that this unfortunate argument will please Moscow as much as it undermines Europe. She also states that ‘it will astonish the refugees displaced by Russia’s occupation of 20 percent of Georgian sovereign territory, and strike sentient Georgian citizens as divorced from a deep historical reality.’

The author provides information on the facts that show a strictly different picture.

Georgia is sixth out of 189 countries in terms of ease of doing business, according to the World Bank Group,” Katsarava says.

The article author also refers to Georgia’s seventh place among 82 countries in the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World and 17th in the Heritage Foundation’s index, adding that Georgia is a major trading hub, with free-trade agreements with the European Union, China, the Commonwealth of Independent States and Turkey, among others.

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