President Margvelashvili reacts to secret conversation:
Urges ex-president Saakashvili to stop bringing tension to Georgia

President of Georgia Giorgi Margvelashvili is calling on the country’s ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili to stay out of Georgia’s election environment and to not create tension, as he has no right getting involved.

Margvelashvili’s spokesperson Eka Mishveladze voiced the President’s opinion after a secret recording of a conversation allegedly between Saakashvili and former ruling United National Movement (UNM) party leaders leaked on Youtube overnight.

In the recording the group discussed a "revolutionary scenario” if UNM loses the Parliamentary Elections on October 8, 2016.

"The President has multiple times expressed his position and called on the Ukrainian official to restrain himself from engaging in Georgia’s election processes,” Mishveladze said.

"It would be very good if he showed patience and not to bring tension to this very democratic process – the elections.”

Saakashvili, Georgia’s former president and UNM leader now serves as Odessa Governor in Ukraine. He received Ukrainian citizenship, which meant he had his Georgian citizenship revoked in December 2015.

Meanwhile Margvelashvili believed individuals from any political group could incite violence and aggression and it was the state’s responsibility to address all potential violations and not let such people affect the elections.

"Politicians should not base their debates on allegations against each other. This should end by law enforcers. As for politicians, they should talk to people about their own election platforms and visions,” Margvelashvili said.

"Voters should be able to make their decision in a calm and free environment on October 8 [the date of Georgia’s Parliamentary Elections].”

Meanwhile the President also called on law enforcing agencies to properly investigate today’s secret recording, as well as all other secretly recorded conversations that were earlier released, and to answer all questions that people had regarding illegal recordings.