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Demoralized Georgia may renew itself by restoring its monarchy
By Gerald Warner (Aug 20, 2008)
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(This article has been altered slightly to reflect current realities)
The official website for the Royal House of Georgia is:
http://theroyalhouseofgeorgia.org
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As war-torn Georgia struggles to assert its sovereignty and redefine its identity, there is now a growing possibility that the country may have recourse to an option that has been simmering on the political agenda for the past 18 years by restoring its ancient monarchy and recalling the head of the Bagration dynasty to the throne.
Even before the Russian invasion this proposal was being canvassed within the past year. The Bagration dynasty is more than a thousand years old and was forcibly removed from the Georgian throne by Russia in 1801. The Georgian people never consented to the abolition of either their monarchy or their national sovereignty.
When the Soviet Union collapsed and Georgia declared independence, one of the earliest proposals for a constitutional settlement was the restoration of the monarchy. In 1991 the Georgian government and parliament officially recognised Prince George Bagration-Moukhranski, formerly well known as a racing driver, as head of the royal house. The fact that they took the trouble to do so demonstrates that the monarchy was a substantive political issue.
During the civil war and general turbulence that ensued, the monarchic question was sidelined, though it never completely disappeared. Opinion polls showed wildly fluctuating public opinion on a restoration, varying from 2 per cent support to 45 per cent (with only 29 per cent opposed).
A succession of authoritarian presidents --- Gamsakhurdia, Shevardnadze and Saakashvili --- provoked a backlash against the power of the presidency. Lately the opposition parties have adopted the slogan "Georgia without a President."
Democrats have been talking about monarchy on the British model and citing the example of King Juan Carlos in Spain to prove the practicability of a restoration. What brought things back to the boil, however, was a sermon preached by the head of the Georgian Orthodox Church, the Patriarch Illia II, on October 7 last year, in which he publicly called for the restoration of the monarchy as the "desirable dream of the Georgian people". That led to the question being debated in parliament.
Now the situation has been radically transformed. Mikheil Saakashvili is badly discredited. The nation may, for the moment, be rallying around him as a symbol of national identity, but that effect will not last long. His was the only political party in Georgia unambiguously opposed to a restoration, but it has little credibility now. In a time of defeat and suffering people are turning to the church, which is royalist.
Georgia has no military options against Russia, its economy has been devastated, it lacks diplomatic leverage. Yet there is one politico-cultural gesture it could make to renew itself, to reassert its national identity, to unite around a non-partisan symbol, and that is to restore its monarchy. The fact that it was originally abolished by Russia would give added meaning to this act of constitutional renewal.
The head of the royal house, the de jure King is His Royal Highness Prince Nugzar Bagration-Gruzinsky, which is obvious from the genealogy and the fact that both he and his ancestors followed the international law by claiming and using their titles throughout all their generations. There were no abdications and no one ever renounced their rights. Hence, their "de jure" rights are intact. This is the only family that holds the full and complete "de jure" sovereign right to the throne according to both international and dynastic law. (See: "Sovereignty & The Future of Nobility and Royalty" and "Dynastic Law")
(The above article on Georgia, with some slight changes, was published by Telegraph.co.uk on August 20, 2008 and can be seen at: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/gerald_warner/blog/2008/08/20
/demoralised_georgia_may_renew_itself_by_restoring_its_monarchy)
See the official website of the Royal House of Georgia at:
http://georgianroyalhouse.jimdo.com
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