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Cooperation Treaty: Ex-PM formed friendship with Kremlin
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Author: Story by Nina Akhmeteli
The cooperation treaty with Russian ruling party Edinaya Rossia (United Russia) at a time when the Kremlin openly refuses to have any talks with the current Georgian authorities while Russian forces are occupying Georgia’s regions is a betrayal, officials in Tbilisi said.
Former Georgian Prime Minister and a leader of the Justice for Georgia Zurab Noghaideli signed a cooperation agreement with the Russian ruling party on Feb. 9 after a series of visits to Moscow.
According to the Chair of the State Duma Boris Grizlov, the cooperation between the two countries ensures the partial cooperation and exchange of information and experience.
Noghaideli called the signing of the treaty an “important historical document that lays the foundation of tomorrow according to information on Edinaya Rossia’s Web site.
“We understand that Russian-Georgian relations today are on a very low level. That is why the agreement signed today between our parties is a very important, historical document that lays the foundation of tomorrow when Russian-Georgian relations will start gradually improving and the enmity will be replaced by partner and friendly relations,” Noghaideli said.
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‘The end of the Orange plague’
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Author: Story by Louis-Antoine Le Moulec
After the second round of presidential elections, Viktor Yanukovytch finally became the new president of Ukraine. Despite the fact that Europe, the U.S. and OSCE observers declared the election free and democratic, on Feb. 10, his opponent Prime Minister Youlia Tymoshenko was still contesting the result.
The Central Elections Commission said that Yanukovytch garnered 48, 95 percent of the vote compared with 45, 47 percent for Tymoshenko, with some four percent of the votes for “against all.” The second round of voting attracted about 69, 07 percent of total voters, slightly more than the 66, 76 percent of votes cast in the first round.
Some political analysts might say that Tymoshenko’s strategy failed. Even, if her political program was said to be more pragmatic, the woman with the braid hair did not convince Ukrainian citizens. After two mandates as prime minister, Tymoshenko failed to stem the economic crisis that severely hit Ukraine’s economy as the GDP decreased by 15 percent in 2009 alone.
For Yanukovytch, it is more than a victory. Elected president at the end of 2004, the strong Orange Revolution brought about his resignation in favor of Viktor Yushchenko. After six years of campaigning in his political stronghold in eastern Ukraine, Yanukovytch is back in Kiev.
As expected, Yanukovytch received a large share of votes from the east, and Tymoshenko from the west, but the rest of the country shunned the elections. Tymoshenko’s block claimed that there was massive corruption in eastern and southeastern Ukraine. In fact, some Western journalists reported cases of the sale of votes and wired transactions, but officials said the cases of voting corruption were not a major trend.
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‘Time is not on Tehran’s side’
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Author: Story and photo by Nana Sajaia
“This is the voice of Iran, the voice of the true Iran, the voice of the Islamic Revolution,” said an evening broadcast from an Iranian radio station 31 years ago on Feb. 11. This historic statement informed listeners about an event that history preserved as Iran’s Islamic Revolution. Years later during the election campaign, Iran’s acting President Mahmud Ahmadinejad said: “Iran did not have a revolution in order to have democracy, but to have an Islamic government” and as Western critics say, he kept moving along the same track during his presidency as well.
What was the Islamic Revolution all about?
On Feb. 11 Iran marked the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution—a day that marked the end of the country’s western-backed monarchy under Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi and the start of an Islamic Republic.
The Shah criticized for ignoring the poor and middle class. Iranians also condemned the Shah for spurning Islamic traditions in favor of modernization and stronger ties to the West.
The opposition movement was led by a religious leader, who denounced the Shah as a “Washington’s puppet.” After a series of mass rallies in late 1978, the Washington Post concluded that “disciplined and well-organized marchers lent considerable weight to the opposition’s claim of being an alternative government.” Similarly, the Christian Science Monitor stated that the “giant wave of humanity sweeping through the capital declared louder than any bullet or bomb could the clear message, ‘The shah must go.’” Confronted by this opposition and aware that an increasing numbers of soldiers were deserting to the opposition, the Shah decided to leave Iran.
Seven weeks after the revolution, a nationwide referendum replaced the monarchy with the Islamic Republic. Of the 21 million eligible voters, more than 20 million, or 97 percent, endorsed the change. Liberal supporters of Khomeini wanted to offer a third option to the electorate that of a democratic Islamic Republic, but Khomeini overruled them on the grounds that the term democratic was redundant because Islam itself was democratic.
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The outcomes of the Islamic Revolution and Iran’s current politics
Interview with Iranian Ambassador to Georgia Mojtaba Damirchiloo
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Author: Interview by Nana Sajaia
Q: As Iran marks the thirty-first anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, Western media raises questions regarding the outcomes of what took place in 1979. If to judge outcomes based on Iran’s current politics, what has been the achievements and the failures of the Revolution?
A: One of the outcomes of the Islamic Revolution was not only replacing the government, which included the change of the governmental system, but as well changing the mentality and the ideology of Iranian society.
Before the Islamic Revolution, Iran was a monarchy, which did not represent peoples’ will and neither were they participating in the state building. But after the revolution the situation was totally changed and unlike monarchy where power was inherited, people now are able to choose their government on their own.
Post revolution amendments concerned both internal and international politics. On the internal stage, Iranian people believed in their own abilities to run country independently, they recognized that they can build their state and implement politics aimed to development and independence from other countries. In a post-revolution Iran people started to perform jobs which were carried out by invited foreign experts during the monarchy. That’s why Iran started its economic, political, and cultural developments.
As for the international factor, one of the major characteristics of the Islamic Revolution was Iran’s foreign independence. Iran became independent and innitiated its relations with foreign countries on the equal level. Before the revolution Iran belonged to the Western Block, from which it separated after the revolution and established itself as an independent state that was unusual for that time.
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