Arcadia Foundation

It is said in Tbilisi that if many share the same dream, it has the potential to become a reality.

Today, Georgia stands at the doorway of that achievable ‘dream’ in that it seems clear tangible change is on the way. Such change is brought to us by Bidzina Ivanishvili and his newfound ‘Georgian Dream Movement’.

It’s been brought about to bring the one thing that has hindered the political landscape from being competitive. Resources have allowed a President, who many view as having visions of Putinism dancing in his head, to assume that the upcoming elections were his to landslide. And therefore it is resource that the Georgian Dream provides to facilitate free and fair elections, to assist two leading opposition parties in order to effectively compete – giving them the ball and asking them to run.

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Historically, development was a promise all too often given in the nation with the fourth largest oil reserves in the world. From the federal level on down to the state to state, electricity was and in many cases is lacking throughout Nigeria and infrastructural progression is often subtly put on the political backburner.

Then there is the case of Akwa Ibom State.

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The following, penned in Arab News by Kazakhstan Foreign Minister Yerzhan Kazykhanov, is an intriguing recommendation that Muslims should address misperceptions in the world about the nature of their religion, in light of the nation taking on the role of chairing the 57-country Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

“…We did so because we saw an important opportunity to give a fresh impetus to the OIC’s long-standing objectives of promoting modernization in the Muslim world in line with the values of Islam based on peace, tolerance and human dignity. As a country both in Europe and Asia, we do not believe in the Samuel Huntington theory of the “Clash of Civilizations.” Over the past 20 years the advance of globalization, the expansion of free markets and the rise of “emerging” economies from Asia to Latin America have created new linkages rather than the re-emergence of old divisions predicted by Prof. Huntington. Kazakhstan’s own experience as a predominantly Muslim nation with more than 100 ethnic groups and 40 religions and with no history of either inter-religious or inter-ethnic enmity or bloodshed is also a case in point.

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