“On this rhetorical question why tomorrow if it is possible to be done today, I would answer: because that’s possible only tomorrow and not today… There are things, which if you try to do today instead of tomorrow you may… spoil other things as well.”
Davit Usupashvili, speaker of the Georgian parliament
It is hard to argue with the speaker. Because, when you do not want to spoil other things tomorrow by doing something today, you better not to do today what could be done only tomorrow. If I did not know that the speaker talked about the electoral system reform, I would have thought that it was a college student, having some talk with himself about whether or not to procrastinate or start studying. Actually, I came up with a perfect example!
Let us say the guy thinks: “Hm…should I start studying for the next week’ exam? Oh, nope… I guess not, because the exam is only a next week, but Jennifer invited me to a party tonight. And if everything would be all right, I might have an unspoiled tomorrow morning and today’s evening.”
However, no more jokes. Back to business politics.
Long story short, according to the civil.ge, the coalition of the Georgian Dream (GD) is in danger (NOOOOOOOO!!!). The electoral system reform should ‘scrap the majoritarian component for the electoral system that will be held after the 2016 parliamentary polls.’ The GD would like the changes be implemented after the 2016 elections, when opposition believes that it can be done already in the upcoming elections. The decision should be a consensus in the ruling coalition, otherwise the Georgian Dream would literally fell in to pieces.
Nevertheless, the reform is indeed important. (LONG SENTENCE AHEAD! ALARM!). The current system in which 73 lawmakers are elected in 73 majoritarian, single-mandate constituencies through plurality vote, and rest 77 seats are allocated proportionally under the party-list contest among political parties, which clear 5% threshold, does not seem very democratic and representative for the constitutional court that said in a May 28th ruling that the current system ‘undermines equality voting’. The current system reminds me a UK’s model, because majoritarian constituencies vary from 150,000 voters to 6,000 in a single unit, thus naturally securing advantage for the ruling party and creating an additional ‘thresholds’ for smaller opposition parties.
Hence, it is natural for Usupashvili to procrastinate with the reform, when his party is a member of a ruling coalition, because the Republican Party of Georgia might not get in to the parliament during the next elections if to scrap the majoritarian component. That is why justifying procrastination by saying that something done today could spoil tomorrow is a rational tactic. Evidently, the coalition is more important!
Nevertheless, no comment about the GD’s coalition coming from the speaker’s speaker could be ever compared with the Klichko’s (Kiev mayor/boxer/ brilliant orator) originality and genius, because as he said ‘today, not everyone could look at tomorrow. Rather, not only everybody could look, but a few could do that.” (priceless….). So, Mr. Usupashvili, answering the question ‘why tomorrow, if it is possible to be done today?’, because tomorrow is not today, and not everybody would be able to see how we spoiled it. Rather not everybody, but just a few.