Happy Nation of Georgia!

Wow, it seems that satire once exiled from South Caucasus by authoritarian regimes is coming home - below is a wonderful new music video by a Georgian pop-star Anri Jokhadze. This is how Matthew Collin describes it:

... Now, the past two gruelling months of confrontation between opposition and government in Georgia have been encapsulated in a hilarious pop video by singer Anri Jokhadze.

Taking as its theme a phrase from nineteenth-century Georgian poet-hero Ilia Chavchavadze, the Happy Nation video lampoons President Mikheil Saakashvili, his opponents, and various other Georgian celebrities, as well as satirising well-known Georgian pop-propaganda videos.

In the beginning, there appears Ilia Chavchavadze speaking something in a silent movie style, then you can surely recognize Misha Saakashvili and Nino Burjanadze. Afterwards there can be seen (respectively) Salome Zourabichvili, and rap star-turned-politician Gia 'Utsnobi' Gachechiladze, TV show star Inga Grigolia and smoking Irakli Okruashvili. Suddenly we see Georgia's unsuccessful Eurovision 2009 entrants Stephane & 3G singing We Don't Wanna Put In and Russian PM Vladimir Putin a la Matrix. And the end once again features Saakashvili with his famous American masseuse Dr. Dot and mocks one propagandist Georgian government advertisement about Abkhazia.

And the song asks: “Is there a nation as happy as ours?”