Surab Schwania

Surab Schwania

Zurab Schwania ( Georgian ზურაბ ჟვანია , Zurab Žvania ; born December 9, 1963 in Tbilisi ; † February 3, 2005 ibid) was a Georgian politician ( United National Movement ). The biologist was Minister of State from November 2003 to February 2004 and Prime Minister of Georgia from February 17, 2004 until his death.

Life

Youth and job

Schwania was born to a Georgian father and a Jewish-Armenian mother. He graduated from secondary school in 1980 with a high school diploma , and in 1985 from Tbilisi State University with a master's degree in biology . From 1985 to 1992 he worked as a senior laboratory assistant at the Faculty of Human and Animal Physiology at the State University and as a subordinate research assistant.

Zurab Schwania had been married to Nino Kadagidze, who runs a bookstore for English-language books in Tbilisi, since 1993, and had a son and two daughters: Elisabeth, Bessarion and Anna. He spoke English, German and Russian.

Party politician

From 1988 to 1993 Schwania was chairman of the Central Council of the Georgian Greens , spokesman for the Green Party and chairman of the European Green Union . In 1993 he united his party and the followers of President Eduard Shevardnadze to form the Georgian Citizens' Union , and was its general secretary from 1994 to 1996. After separating from Shevardnadze in 2001, Schwania founded the United Democrats party in 2002 and became its chairman. For the parliamentary elections in 2003 he joined an electoral alliance with the President of Parliament Nino Burjanadze as Burjanadze Democrat .

From June to November 1992 Schwania was chairman of the Ecology Commission of the Georgian State Council, from 1992 to 1995 a member of the Georgian parliament, chairman of the Greens parliamentary group and deputy chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. From 1995 to 1999 he was again a member of parliament. Parliament elected him President.

Opposition

In 2000 Schwania distanced himself for the first time from Shevardnadze, accusing him of corruption. In August 2001, he called on the President in an open letter to put an end to corruption: “Teachers earn 15 euros a month, while ministers build palaces in the center of Tbilisi. That goes beyond the bounds of cynicism. ” In November 2001, Schwania resigned from the post of President of Parliament after demonstrations against President Shevardnadze.

In spring 2003 he met the former Russian oligarch Boris Abramowitsch Berezovsky in London , through the mediation of the Georgian entrepreneur Badri Patarkazishvili . It was the first in a series in which Schwania successfully raised funds to support democratic institutions in Ukraine and the campaign of Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko .

Together with Mikheil Saakashvili and Nino Burdschanadze , Schwania led the rose revolution in Georgia in November 2003 . Immediately after the change on November 23, Schwania took over the duties of incumbent minister of state, initiated the first reforms and organized Saakashvili's presidential election campaign. He became a leading member of the National Movement - Democrats party , which unites the carriers of the Velvet Revolution.

prime minister

Schwania was appointed Prime Minister by Parliament in February 2004 on a proposal from the President and headed a 15-member reform cabinet, the average age of which was 35. In the Georgian government, Schwania was seen as a moderate counterweight to the impetuous President Saakashvili, whom he had reprimanded in 2002 for “excessive radicalism” . He was also a key figure in the negotiations for the separatist republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia .

Schwania's role in privatizations in Georgia was publicly controversial . He drew all final decisions about it to himself. He changed the economically responsible ministers three times in 24 months. Local economic experts criticized his role in the sale of the port of Batumi and 16 ships of the Georgian Black Sea Fleet as not being constitutional .

Early death

Early in the morning of February 3, 2005, he was found dead with ministerial official Raul Yusupov in an apartment in Tbilisi at 53A Saburtalo Street. He succumbed to gas poisoning from carbon monoxide . The police, public prosecutors and the FBI involved spoke of an accident caused by a faulty gas stove.

Schwania's brother, Giorgi, declared against it that it was an assassination attempt. In the investigation files, he found five pieces of information that contradict the official death version. According to research by television journalist Wachtang Komachidze, the FBI had not found any lethal gas concentrations emitted by the stove in question. However, the Georgian translation of the English-language investigation report claimed the opposite.

The public prosecutor's investigation into Schwania's death was still ongoing two years after the Prime Minister's death. In September 2007, the interior and defense minister in the Schwania cabinet, Irakli Okruashvili , declared at a press conference that the location of Schwania's body was not identical to the place of his death. The body was brought to the apartment after the premier's death.

Awards

In 2002 Schwania received the Georgian Open Society Prize for promoting liberal ideas of an open society. In 2004 he was awarded the W. Averell Harriman Democracy Award from the US National Democratic Institute (NDI) as the organizer of the Rose Revolution .

literature

• Zurab Karumidze, James V. Wert: “Enough!”: The Rose Revolution in the Republic of Georgia 2003 . Nova Science Publications, New York 2005, ISBN 1-59454-210-4 .

Web links

Commons : Zurab Zhvania  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Official biography of Schwania (en, geo, ru)
• Wachtang Komachidze: Questions about Schwania's death remain open (en)

References

1. ↑ ^{a b} Patrick Richter: Death in Tbilisi, February 8, 2005