The Magna Carta of England of 1215 proclaimed certain liberties, and emphasized that the king could no longer rule arbitrarily. As a consequence, the royal power was restricted to a very considerable extent. And it was a good thing to have done. The session of the Georgian parliament of 21 March of 2013 amended the constitution, stripping the president of his excessive rights, which allowed him to act only at his own discretion at the most crucial moments of the country’s political life.
The new amendment was a serious democratic achievement of Georgia’s incumbent legislators. It is so funny that the English politicians of those faraway times suggested the alterations, so comparable to those made by contemporary Georgian politicians. Has nothing changed since then about political morality? Well, something has of course, but not very much, I would say. Some of the sovereigns of the remote past wanted unlimited powers to enjoy and some of the presidents of today would pleasurably indulge in having as much power as they could possibly digest and administer. The bygone centuries have given us enough practical experience and more than enough theoretical knowledge to make useful logical judgments in good time and at the right moment so that every new turn of the country’s administration have no moral right and administrative tool to twist and tailor law according to the whims and wishes of the administrators whose jobs have only x-number of years to last. There has to be a functioning mechanism in a political system, which will never allow one particular person to take over the government – isn’t this but axiomatic! Magna Carta was not an accident – it was a consequence of a fair logic and ripened exigency of that time. It was adopted and made functional only as a result of good moral thinking, serving freedom as such. The society felt that it wanted to be free and the society had allowed it. Then what’s wrong with us after so many long centuries of human experience? Now the question is how to nurse and bring in the society that wants to be free and is capable of being free with dignity. I have heard from a wise American politician that a free society could not exist without a moral people. There we go! Could the issue of moral be the crux of the matter in our political reality? Should we not make our understanding of political morality the subject of urgent critical analysis? We certainly have some rules to abide by, but ‘Just writing rules won’t work if the people choose to ignore them; today the rule of law written in the Constitution has little meaning for most Americans’ – continues the American politician. How about Georgians? Could the same be true about us too? The constitutions, charters, laws, rules and regulations are all written by us the people – politicians among them. Those acts are for the same people to adopt and then to go by. Then why should we be wasting time writing the documents that will not last? Why can’t we be so reasonable that the bills, written into law with our own pens be made so lasting and durable that our valuable time, ink and energy are not wasted without a good reason for it? How come that American constitution was amended only 27 times in almost a quarter of a millennium, and ours is being written and rewritten practically every year? The necessity of using the Magna Carta precedent of the 13th century in the 21st century Georgia should be the result of what I am tending to call ‘reckless immature politicking’, to say the least. But . . . there is always a chance to grow a little better over time! Am I not being an inveterate optimist for that matter?