Georgian Parliament Speaker doesn’t advice Ukraine to appoint Saakashvili to a high post
By Gvantsa Gabekhadze
Thursday, May 30
Georgian Parliament Speaker Irakli Kobakhidze does not advise the new government of Ukraine to appoint ex-President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili to a high political post, after the latter reclaimed his Ukrainian citizenship on May 28, under the new President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky.
Kobakhidze said that Saakashvili is an 'adventurer,' and he will create problems to Zelensky, as he did to his former ally, ex-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
“The decision [regarding the restoration of Saakashvili’s citizenship] should have been made by the Ukrainian President, and we do not get involved in the process. Georgia and Ukraine are allies, and the decision will not affect the relations of the two countries. The only thing we can do now is to give advice,” Kobakhidze said.
A member of the Georgian Dream ruling party Giorgi Volski says that Zelensky’s decision is “disappointing; however, the Georgian-Ukrainian relations are more important.”
Saakashvili, whose Ukrainian citizenship was annulled by Poroshenko in 2017 after the Georgian ex-President opposed him “for corruption,” took the very first flight to Ukraine from Poland, where he was deported in 2018.
He vowed that he will help Zelensky fulfill the promises he had given to the Ukrainian people.
Members of the United National Movement opposition party, the party Saakashvili founded in Georgia in 2001, believe that Saakashvili will not be focused only on Ukraine and that he will continue the fight in his homeland, where the former president is charged with several crimes and faces imprisonment if he returns.
“Georgia is of top importance for Saakashvili, and his comeback in Ukraine means that he will also return to Georgia,” the party member Roman Gotsiridze said, adding that Saakashvili “created a new headache for the Georgian Dream leadership.”
The party says that Zelensky will be a successful President as he started his career in the highest post “with fair decisions.”
Georgian expert Valeri Chechelashvili says that Saakashvili’s party in Ukraine may run on July 21 parliamentary elections and make a coalition with Zelensky’s party.
Ukrainian expert Vitaly Bala states that Zelensky took a risk as Saakashvili might one day head the people who will be disappointed by the new government of the country.
“He has already done this in terms of Poroshenko,” Bala says.
Saakashvili and Poroshenko were university friends, and the latter granted the Ukrainian citizenship to Saakashvili in 2015 and appointed him as Odessa governor the same year.
In 2016 Saakashvili opposed Poroshenko, accused him of lobbying corruption and created a party to oppose him.
Saakashvili held large-scale rallies in Ukraine against Poroshenko in 2017. That year he was deprived of his Ukrainian citizenship and was deported to Poland in early 2018.
The reason Poroshenko named for the annulment of Saakashvili’s citizenship was that Saakashvili hid he was charged in Georgia with several possible crimes, which Saakashvili called 'absurd,' and an attempt to remove him from Ukraine’s politics.
Saakashvili, who served as Georgia’s third president from 2004 to 2007 and again from 2008 to 2013, is accused of the violent dispersal of anti-government mass protests on November 7, 2007, in Tbilisi; unlawful raiding of Imedi TV Company by riot police and the illegal take-over of property owned by late media tycoon Badri (Arkadi) Patarkatsishvili.
He says the accusations are 'invented.'
When Saakashvili took up Ukrainian citizenship in 2015, he automatically lost the Georgian citizenship as the dual citizenship of Georgia is possible only with the permission of the president.
From 2017 until May 28, 2019, Saakashvili had no citizenship of any country.
