Ruling party, opposition sceptical of ex-president Saakashvili’s continued vows to return
Georgia’s thind President Mikheil Saakashvili says that the Georgian people will not allow the Georgian Dream government to arrest him. Photo: EPA.
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Both the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party and the opposition are sceptical that the country’s ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili, who currently chairs the Executive Committee of the Ukrainian National Reforms Council, will keep his recent promise and return to Georgia for the October 2 municipal elections.
They say that Saakashvili, who is a citizen of Ukraine, has made such vows many times over the last nine years.
Head of the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party Irakli Kobakhidze has stated that even Saakashvili’s pledge that he will return, ‘which, of course, is not serious’ has boosted the GD’s rating by at least seven per cent.
GD officials say Saakshvili would be arrested as soon as he entered the country as he faces several criminal charges, including the violent dispersal of anti-government mass protests on November 7, 2007, a raid on TV channel Imedi by riot police and the illegal take-over of the property.
Saakashvili says that upcoming municipal elections are crucial for the country. Photo: Nino Alavidze/Sgenda.ge.
Leader of Lelo opposition party, former parliament speaker under GD David Usupashvili says that Saakashvili has been successfully used by the ruling party to ‘frighten the voters by the return of Saakashvili’s United National Movement (UNM) party to power to win elections.’
Leader of the Girchi - More Freedom party Zurab Zaparidze says that ‘at least Saakashvili is playing a lottery’ ahead of the elections ‘as even promising the return can make an influence on the electoral process.’
Girchi MP Iago Khvichia said that he is doubtful of Saakashvili’s return.
If he really returns I will wait for him in a Porsche car (which I have not now) and will accompany him to parliament,” Khvichia said.
Unlike other opposition parties, UNM members say that the government is ‘very much afraid of Saakashvili’s return.’
Georgian Ambassador to Ukraine Teimuraz Sharashenidze, who was recalled to Tbilisi last year after former President Mikheil Saakashvili became chair of the executive committee of the Ukrainian National Reforms Council, will return to Kyiv.
The court in Georgia’s Black Sea town of Batumi has denied bail to one Georgian and two Ukrainian citizens detained for the violation of the state border. Two Ukrainian citizens Volodymyr Dyachenko and Yuriy Khomych as well as Georgian citizen Mykhailo Baturyn, who previously served as Georgia’s third President Mikheil Saakashvili’s guard, were detained last November.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has urged its public servants to refrain from making any statements on Georgia which may spark tension in the country.
The third Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has announced today that he will come back to Georgia for the upcoming October 2 municipal race. Saakashvili in his video address, published on his Facebook page, called on Georgian emigrants to join him and come back to the country for the elections. Saakashvili who served as the country’s third president from 2004 to 2013 left Georgia back in 2013 facing several criminal charges after the Georgian Dream (GD) came to power.
Former President of Georgian Mikheil Saakashvili, who currently chairs the Executive Committee of the Ukrainian National Reforms Council, has called on the personnel of the Georgian armed forces ‘to actively participate in the October 2 municipal elections' in Georgia, because the country 'must be saved' from the current Georgian Dream leadership.
Georgian Defence Minister Juansher Burchuladze has responded to former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s appeal to the country’s army ‘to actively participate' in the upcoming October 2 municipal elections and stated that Saakashvili’s statement aims at discrediting and politicising the Georgian army.