Legacy or folly: Saakashvili's glass police stations

Mother Georgia, who towers above Tbilisi.
A wine goblet in one hand, a sword in the
other.  An apt description for Georgia.

Last week I was in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia.  One of the first things that strikes you when you travel in Georgia is the amount of glass.  The new airport terminal is all glass, despite the worn runway that makes for a rough landing, even in the smoothest of conditions.  As you drive into the capital Tbilisi, there are modern glass buildings everywhere.  The intriguing fact is that many of these buildings are actually police stations.  The story of how they came to be built from glass is an analogous to the broader journey of Georgia over the past 10 years.  

Georgia has a long history of organized crime activity dating back to the Soviet period and even earlier.  By the early 2000's, Georgia's mob bosses were among the leading crime figures in the entire former USSR.   Following the resignation of Georgia's president Eduard Shevardnadze after the so called 'Rose Revolution' in 2003, Mikheil Saakashvili became the new president.  He remained president until 2012, and was a generally popular, if not controversial pro-west leader who spearheaded a range of sweeping political and economic reforms.   

Upon coming to power, Saakashvili’s first and arguably most dramatic domestic actions consisted of a major crackdown on organised crime and Georgia’s corrupt law enforcement institutions. He used draconian measures to prosecute the organised crime bosses, imprisoning many and driving others into involuntary exile abroad. At the same time, top officials in many security ministries were fired, and in some cases forced to hand back millions of dollars worth of assets believed to have been obtained through illegal activities.

He also comprehensively reshaped the country’s police forces. Thousands of officers were fired on the spot, and the most corrupt police service, the highway police, was disbanded altogether. He also drastically increased police salaries and instituted stringent new hiring and promotion procedures, thereby recruiting into the force a new cohort of officers eager to earn an honest living as police.  As an indication, the average salary of a police officer in Georgia today, is 23 times higher than it was in 2004.

One of the most visible impacts of these reforms has been the reconstruction of many police stations across the country out of......glass.  This is intended to be a symbolic of Georgia's commitment to transparency and to eliminate corruption.  For some this is just theatre, and that the old ways of business still prevail (I heard it said that Saakashvili's relative owns the largest glass company in Georgia, although I suspect this may be more urban myth than fact)!  Whether it's theatre or not, the reform steps that Georgia has taken in the past 10 years would appear to be significant. 

I still remember my first visit to Georgia in 2001, and being stopped several times by police between the airport and the city with an expectation of a bribe payment.  Nowadays you are more likely to be stopped by a tourist coach as it disgorges tourists, stopping to photograph one of the many thousands of churches or new glass police stations!