Yesterday, on 4 February, Former Prime Minister of Georgia
Bidzina Ivanishvili held a press- conference presenting to public his newly established
NGO ‘Citizen’. GHN offers a report of the event based on EurasiaNet’s article.
Georgia's ex-Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili has found a new
calling -- to teach Georgians how to make what Ivanishvili will consider to be
informed decisions. And he's got just the tool in mind -- a new foundation,
called "Citizen."
“Yes, we need to learn how to hire the government. First of all, we need to
learn well who to hire,” Ivanishvili told a
capacity-crowd press-conference in
Tbilisi.
He plans to expand on this through his new NGO, which, he said, will help train
Georgian media and experts in deep, “correct” ways of interpreting news and
facts. The organization also will underwrite media research and sponsor a
training course for experts.
Deciding that there's no time like the present to start this
mission, Ivanishvili, who has no work experience in journalism, took a few
reporters to task during his hours-long press conference, lambasting them for
their supposed impatience and incompetence. The journalists, for their part,
were more interested in his perceived failure to live up to the lavish campaign
promises that helped put him in
office in 2012.
Some media analysts later agreed that Georgian journalists could use some
professional training (despite the
huge sums of money already spent
by foreign donors on such events), but puffed their cheeks out at the idea of
media training offered by a politically involved billionaire.
Another key area of Citizen’s focus will be improving Georgia's economic
environment, another constant cause for complaint and a source of criticism for
Ivanishvili's policies as prime minister. “The backbone of civil society is an
employed citizen, who earns an income to ensure a dignified life for his
family,” observed Ivanishvili. To that end, the foundation will give grants to
a NGO set up for this purpose.
Politics, of course, also made the agenda, and Ivanishvili was
eager to provide the answers here as well, spending hours dismissing critics of
the current government led by his protégé, Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili,
and advising the country to laugh off the opposition's so-called intrigues.
