PM Garibashvili: If ‘coward Saakashvili’ returns, he will be arrested
PM Irakli Garibashvili has responded to ex-president Saakashvili’s alleged return to Georgia on October 2. Photo: government of Georgia press office.
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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, 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.
Today the state is powerful and Mikho (Mikheil Saakashvili) and his gang must understand it is not 2003 (when the United National Movement under Saakashvili overthrew Eduard Shevardnadze’s government). Every provocation will be strictly responded by the state within the law. If Saakashvili, this coward, decides that there is no place for him (in Ukraine) and returns to Georgia, the law will be enforced and he will go to prison,” Garibashvili said.
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.
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.’
All Georgian constituencies will be provided with video cameras to record the vote-counting process during the upcoming October 2 municipal elections, Deputy Chairman of the Central Election Commission (CEC) Giorgi Sioridze announced earlier today. Sioridze also noted that video recordings are the only ‘new technological innovation’ implemented for the upcoming elections.
Election polls commissioned by the opposition-minded TV channel Mtavari Arkhi says that the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party will receive 35% of the vote while the largest opposition United National Movement (UNM) party will get 30% of the vote in the upcoming October 2 municipal race.
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.
Head of the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party Irakli Kobakhidze says that Georgian ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili’s recently released video allegedly from the Georgian city of Batumi is a fake and that Saakashvili is a ‘clown.’ “I can say for sure that the video is fake. Saakashvili is not in Georgia,” Kobakhidze said. The Georgian Interior Ministry also claims that Saakashvili has not crossed the Georgian border.
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.