The endless tragedy of COVID-19 leaves less space in Georgia to talk about other issues. However, perhaps we still need to think about how we can have a better policy in the country, not make elections a matter of life and death, and better be able to deal with pandemics or other future crises.

One of the most important issues in this case is the internal democracy of our political parties, even though they themselves don’t think so. Really, why should anyone be interested in this except a small group of people interested in working on party issues? Or what does it matter, what is the internal arrangement of this or that party, is it the case or a puzzle of its members? In fact, how democratic a political party is has a great influence on the management of politics in the country, and politics affects us all.

Let's start with what many talk about - that politics is "polarized" and the parties are radically opposed to each other. This radical, uncompromising political stance has its historical and cultural foundations - Georgian political parties and political culture are like sandwich between two opposing political traditions, which is why agreement, compromise or so popular "cohabitation" is considered an unacceptable weakness.

First, it is the influence of Soviet culture and the post-Soviet political culture that follows us from Bolshevism. This is the principle that the adversary isn’t even a competitor, but an enemy that must be destroyed, including physically; That true victory can only be achieved when the "enemy" is in prison or in exile. This totalitarian culture is rooted in common norms - we too are often applauded when this or that leader calls his rival party an "enemy of the people" and threatens to destroy or disappear it.

Paradoxically, on the other side of this "political sandwich" is an informal political tradition that has fought relentlessly against Soviet totalitarianism and emerged from resistance movements. Here, too, "irreconcilability" and "uncompromising", for obvious reasons, were the main basis of the political struggle. Our political parties have grown on these two traditions, which have been unnoticed but firmly observed in our political thinking. As a result, we have a system of political parties where everyone thinks it is necessary to appear as a brave fighter with "hostile" forces, he will never reconcile with the enemy and will fight to the end to destroy it.

Everyone in Georgia wants to get out of this situation and achieve that the country and its politicians are obsessed not with the genius of "winning" over each other, but with the desire to do something. This is where the issue of intra-party democracy plays an important role: leaders are political and sometimes personal enemies of each other because political parties are largely small and influential groups of people seeking power, not real unions of fellow citizens. It is true that these groups also have some public support, but these citizens themselves have less influence over the activities of political parties. In this respect, our political parties are organizations built on a system of patronage that lead by leaders to power. And then they share the scum with their supporters as well: be it public employment or public procurement contracts. Their members are often more motivated by this than by any other idea or purpose. In a poor country, the political struggle becomes even more brutal because it is largely devoid of political ideas and is a struggle for proximity to the source of wealth. As a result, our political parties are electoral tools for this or that group, and not organizations whose purpose is to gather the public interest, to formulate their political program, and to organize the citizens politically.

This is confirmed by the ranking of internal democracy of Georgian political parties created by our organization (Eastern European Center for Multiparty Democracy - EECMD). We examined how transparent and democratic the three important mechanisms of our political parties are - electoral, organizational and rights protection. The overall picture is quite depressing as none of the 13 parties surveyed by us even exceeded the intermediate score used in the evaluation. The most critical picture is in matters of protection and guarantee of the rights of party members, where parties can’t exceed even the minimum rate. To what extent is it possible for a political party, which doesn’t even have mechanisms to protect and ensure the rights of its members, to take care of the rights of others after the coming to power? The answer to this is easily found in our present and recent past.

The situation is critical for the electoral and organizational institutions as well: almost no one in our political parties knows (at least according to the written rule and norm) what merits this or that person can become a candidate for Parliament or Sakrebulo or mayor. Party finances are highly opaque, especially their internal distribution, and party structures are overly centralized and without autonomy. For example, many political parties have set up youth or women's organizations, but none of them provides pre-defined funding to these structures on the basis of a clear principle - major decisions are made situationally and not according to institutionalized, written rules. The pre-election programs of the parties are mainly created by separate, often invited experts, sometimes communication specialists. They are more demonstrative and democratically created documents reflecting the interests of party members rather than the party.

That is why, according to the indicators of intra-party democracy, we can predict from the very beginning how this or that party will actually behave when governing the country. A party that can’t entrust even its own members with the management of its own budget or the autonomous conduct of party activities in a particular region or city will never allow real self-government or fiscal decentralization. Parties that see the pre-election program not as a plan to express the interests of its members, but as a formal redundancy will not be able to formulate sound policies and conduct them at the country level. Parties that are run informally, opaque, and individually will also continue to run the country. That is why improving the quality of the country's governance and its democracy also starts with improving the political parties.

With the increasing penetration of modern technology, the democratization of knowledge and information, political parties face quite significant risks: they no longer have an unprecedented monopoly on political organization. Social media, informal groups, individual activists often manage and achieve more than them. Some parties, including in Georgia, realize that one of the ways to maintain influence and position is through the development of internal democracy - giving people more opportunity for political participation is an opportunity to arouse interest in the party and find new leaders (if you aren’t afraid of them). According to our latest rankings, relatively newly formed and / or relatively weak election results parties have a higher degree of democracy: “New Political Center Girchi”, “European Georgia”, and “Free Democrats” top our rankings, with the “Patriots Alliance” at the bottom of the list. Such a ranking can also be related to the influence of the foreign policy orientation of the parties: organizations focused on ties with the West are more democratic, while those who want to get closer to authoritarian countries, such as the “Patriots Alliance” are characterized by the least democracy. It is unfortunate that Georgia's two highest-rated parties, the National Movement and the Georgian Dream, have one of the lowest rates of intra-party democracy - they are more outsiders in our rankings than leaders.

In recent days, Georgia has become a world leader in the prevalence and mortality of Covid 19, a major indicator of political incompetence and a sign of absolute failure of governance. This is largely due to the fact that political parties aren’t citizens unions, but rather leaders' clans, where leaders are most likely to fight each other. They can no longer see people, including members of their own party. If they see it, for them it is a resource to be spent on for political expediency, which you can get rid of just as easily as a trivial piece of political card.