Saakashvili meets human rights ombudsman

President-elect Mikheil Saakashvili said he is ready for further dialogue after meeting yesterday with Human Rights Ombudsman Sozar Subari, who has been a fierce critic of many recent government actions.

“We discussed making the state less involved in politics, the rights of businesses and the possibility of using professionals from the opposition for state posts,” Saakashvili told journalists after the meeting.

Pledging to work both with Subari and other public representatives, Saakashvili said he is open to political dialogue and criticism.

Subari told reporters he was pleased with the conversation, and hopes for dialogue to continue.

“It’s important that politics works in favor of the dignity of the people,” Subari said.

But Davit Zurabishvili, a member of the nine-party opposition coalition, told reporters yesterday that the opposition is not willing to take Saakashvili’s promises of dialogue and compromise at face value.

“It’s difficult to trust his word alone, we’ll see soon,” he told journalists after the meeting.

The meeting between Subari and Saakashvili came a day after the ombudsman released an open letter to the president-elect.

In the January 14 letter, which was widely reported by the Georgian media, Subari begins by congratulating Saakashvili on his reelection before launching into an account of human rights abuses by his government.

“You have repeatedly mentioned that the human rights ombudsman does not have a positive attitude towards [the government],” Subari said in the letter. “I assure you that is not true, but we cannot promise we would have a positive attitude towards human rights violations.”

Addressing the violent dispersal of peaceful anti-government demonstrators on November 7, Subari mentions the riot police attack on him, claiming that “the order to [beat me] came from the government.”

The letter condemns a “state elite” which uses violence and exploits its power in a roughshod attempt at building a strong state.

“Whoever does not agree with [the elite] is named an enemy of the state,” the letter continues.

“Officials played games and competed with each other to make people’s lives harder. One poured out wine, the second destroyed garages, the third confiscated land and houses, and a fourth closed down businesses.”

While welcoming Saakashvili’s reelection pledge to make the staffing of his government more inclusive, the letter advised him to leave out people accused of violating human rights.

Subari also warned about a creeping “syndrome of fear in society.”

“It will be hard for foreign observers to see, and I would not be able to prove with documentary evidence, how people are afraid to express their opinions in everyday life,” he wrote.

Subari has said that while the ruling party’s abuse of administrative resources put the broader fairness of the January 5 presidential election into question, the actual voting was credible.

“This election was much better than what we’re used to,” Subari told Rustavi 2 the day after the election.