Former President Saakashvili announces establishment of his headquarters
By Nika Gamtsemlidze
Monday, February 10
Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili plans to open his headquarters at the Saakashvili Presidential Library from March 1. Mikheil Saakashvili writes about this on his personal Facebook page.
“From March 1, on the base of Saakashvili's Presidential Library, I am opening my own headquarters, a personal headquarters that, along with the National Movement and other opposition forces, together with new people coming without parties, will create even more ground and hasten the end of Ivanishvili's regime, and we will save Georgia,” Wrote Saakashvili.
He said all his resources and political experience would help to overcome this “disaster quickly.”
“Many people stand by me, we have great international support for Georgian people, and I will use all of my resources, all my contacts, human and political experience to help me overcome this trouble quickly,” added Saakashvili.
Former lawmaker Gubaz Sanikidze does not rule out joining the headquarters. He said that the headquarters would be a large political camp aimed at changing the government through elections.
“As far as I have heard, this is a desire to set up a political camp, where besides political parties, there will be public organizations, individual figures, that is to say, the creation of a big political camp, perhaps. The purpose of this camp should be to change the government through elections. My attitude and my opinions, by the way, are very close to this point,” noted Sanikidze.
Also, a few days ago, Archil Talakvadze, Speaker of the Parliament of Georgia talked about the future of talks between the government leaders and opposition representatives. As he said, they have time until the end of February to discuss the 2020 elections.
“By the end of February, the window of the negotiation agreement is closing, because if the agreement is not reached by the end of February, Parliament will no longer be able to make those changes to the constitutional level. Consequently, by the end of February it is important that we see the opposition's pragmatic response to our proposals,” noted Talkavadze.
According to him, the 100/50 proposition represents a compromised suggestion compared to the electoral system that the country has today. As he said, he believes that if the opposition wants a compromised and better electoral environment that should think about this proposal.
“We see that some of the oppositional parties, who do not have a big following and think that they can’t be successful in elections, are committed to destruction and their only aim is to find a way to say no to be part of the elections since they know it very well that they can’t be successful,” said Talakvadze.
As for the opposition representatives, they say that the government has the time until the end of February to come up with something that will work for everyone.
One of the leaders of New Georgia, Giorgi Vashadze, if Georgian Dream will demand a transition to fully majoritarian system, they will end up losing the elections.
Talks on the electoral system started a few months ago after the government was unable to adopt electoral amendments according to which 2020 elections should have been held in a fully proportional system.
The decision was followed by mass protests in Tbilisi and international representatives criticized the government for not fulfilling its promises.
