Ex-president Saakashvili posts reserved ticket to Georgia for evening of municipal election day
The Georgian government has expressed dissatisfaction many times that Georgia’s former president Mikheil Saakashvili, who is now taking an official post in Ukraine, is interfering in Georgia’s internal issues. Photo: Saakashvili’s Facebook page.
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Former president of Georgian Mikheil Saakashvili, who currently chairs the Executive Committee of the Ukrainian National Reforms Council, has posted a photo of a reserved ticket from Ukraine to Georgia for the evening of the day of municipal elections in Georgia on October 2.
Saakashvili, now a citizen of Ukraine, has called on voters to support the opposition and after the closure of polling stations took to the street ‘to defend votes.’
He repeated that the municipal elections ‘are also a referendum crucial for the country,’ and ‘I cannot observe the situation remotely.’
Saakashvili claimed that his decision to return ‘is caused only by worries about Georgia and the country’s fate rather by his future political goals.’
Saakashvili says that he will definitely retuirn to Georgia on October 2.
Saakashvili who served as the country’s third president from 2004 to 2013 left Georgia back in 2013 after the Georgian Dream (GD) came to power in 2012.
He faces several criminal charges such as the violent dispersal of anti-government mass protests on November 7, 2007, raiding of TV channel Imedi by riot police,illegal take-over of the property and other crimes.
The April 2021 EU-mediated agreement, which resolved an almost six-month political standoff in Georgia, had obliged the ruling Georgian Dream to accept the holding of repeat parliamentary elections by 2022 if the party received less than 43 per cent of votes in the October 2 municipal elections.
The ruling Georgian Dream party says that Saakashvili frequently lies on his return. Photo: Nino Alavidze/Agenda.ge.
However, the GD withdrew from the agreement at the end of July and stated that ‘no early elections will take place in the country.’
Like Saakashhvili, the UNM and other opposition parties claim that the municipal elections ‘are a referendum anyway,’ stating that if the GD receives less than 43 per cent of votes in the elections, it will have to accept the holding of repeat parliamentary elections.
The ruling party is sure they will win the elections with at least 46 per cent of votes and that Saakashvili ‘who has made pledges to return 17 times’ will not actually do so.
However, the GD says that if Saakashvili returns, he will be arrested.
Former president of Georgian Mikheil Saakashvili, who currently chairs the Executive Committee of the Ukrainian National Reforms Council, has called on Georgian law enforcers ‘to disobey the illegal orders’ of the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) government.
MEP Marina Kaljurand has urged Georgia’s former president Mikheil Saakashvili to refrain from provocations, use his political capital to depolarise the pre-election situation in Georgia and respect the OSCE/ODIHR conclusion on the October 2 municipal elections in Georgia. Kaljurand’s tweet comes after MEPs met with Saakashvili yesterday in Brussels.
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.
Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili says that if Georgia’s third president Mikheil Saakashvili will return for the October 2 municipal elections in Georgia, he will be arrested. Saakashvili has posted a photo of a reserved ticket from Ukraine to Georgia for the evening of the day of municipal elections in Georgia.
The ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party says that ‘there are no expectations’ that President Salome Zurabishvili may pardon ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili who pledges to return to Georgia from Ukraine on the evening of the October 2 municipal election day.
MEP Viola Von Cramon has stated that former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s return to the country for the October 2 municipal elections ‘will not serve the interests of Georgia,’ noting that it will deepen the crisis and create unnecessary tension. Saakashvili pledged earlier in September that he will return to Georgia for the local elections and published a photo of a reserved ticket from Ukraine to Georgia yesterday.
US Ambassador to Georgia Kelly Degnan has commented on Georgian ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili’s alleged plan to return to Georgia on October 2, the day of municipal elections in the country, and said that ‘what Georgia needs now is a peaceful, calm election environment and not political instability and violence.’ Degnan said that many statements have been made on the alleged return of Saakashvili and she had no plans to go into details.
Georgian ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili released a live video allegedly from Georgia’s coastal city of Batumi late yesterday and said that he is already in Georgia ahead of tomorrow’s municipal elections. In the video Saakashvili has urged the public to vote for the United National Movement (UNM) in the elections and if not the UNM, then some other, smaller, ‘real opposition parties’ and not for the Georgian Dream ruling party (GD) or ex-PM Giorgi Gakharia’s For Georgia party.
Eleven days are left until the October 2 municipal elections in Georgia when voters will elect 64 mayors and 2,068 members in 64 city councils. The lead up to the elections has been marked by the ruling party’s withdrawal from the April 19 EU-mediated agreement, an attack on journalists by right-wing activists in July during Tbilisi Pride events, the recent leak of alleged personal files and continued vows of Georgia’s ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili that he will return.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has announced at a briefing in Truskavets, Ukraine today that he will work to bring Ukrainian citizen and former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili, currently detained in Georgia, back to Ukraine using "various means".