Georgian PM: For Georgia opposition party leader, Ex-PM “perfect example” why “no agent must be allowed near power”

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze on Wednesday claimed ex-PM Giorgi Gakharia, who leads the For Georgia opposition party into the parliamentary elections on Saturday, was a “perfect example of why no agent must be allowed anywhere near power”, alleging he had “patrons who instruct him to take actions” that involved “turning the state against citizens” and “the police against the youth”, something he said Gakharia had “executed dutifully” while in Government.

In his interview with Rustavi 2 TV channel, Kobakhidze recalled incidents that took place under Gakharia’s tenure as the Interior Minister and then Prime Minister, which he claimed had implicated the now-opposition figure in mishandling of affairs.

He highlighted an episode involving a planned construction of a hydropower plant in the country’s mostly Muslim-populated Pankisi Gorge in 2019, where local protests grew into a clash between  residents and law enforcers who Kobakhidze said had been “mobilised to ensure security and order” around the construction site.

He argued the then-Interior Minister Gakharia’s actions had “left the riot police and the Interior Ministry humiliated”, and suggested “some might see the elements of a criminal offence” in his conduct.

The Prime Minister also emphasised Gakharia’s role in an incident where Russian-controlled occupation forces erected illegal installations in the village of Chorchana in Khashuri municipality, on Tbilisi-administered territory, in 2020, accusing him of “dutifully carrying out the task of escalation [of the situation]” in this instance.

Had the entire system not intervened and worked on prevention at the time, no one knows where the processes could have led”, Kobakhidze added on the incident.

Addressing a police raid of Tbilisi nightclubs in 2018, which he said had resulted in the detention of eight individuals charged with drug trafficking - an operation the clubs and their visitors alleged  was accompanied by  use of disproportional force, the PM blamed the ex-Interior Minister for “artificially turning the police against the youth” in the case, as he was “acting on the external directives, just like he does today”.

The head of the Government also brought up the June 20, 2019 public protests in Tbilisi, which followed a Russian State Duma MP Sergey Gavrilov taking the seat of the Speaker of the Parliament of Georgia for an address to a session of the Interparliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy in the capital.

 [Gakharia] deliberately did not use water cannons and gas [against the protesters], and for absolutely no apparent reason positioned the police right in front of the gates [of the Parliament where protest was taking place], to cause maximum contact [between the sides] and cause maximum trouble for the riot police”, the PM claimed.

Kobakhidze argued in each of the cases there was “such a valid basis for the [opposition] parties and their TV channels attacking the Government that letting this opportunity slip by was completely illogical”, but added the “entire opposition and all their media outlets remained silent, because Gakharia and these people had and still have the same patron”.