Garibashvili: neither drug addiction, not wish to go to prison pushed Saakashvili to return

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili claims that neither drug addiction ‘which makes people take unreasonable steps’, nor a wish to go to prison pushed Georgia’s ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili to return to Georgia ahead of the October 2 municipal elections. 

In a letter posted on Facebook earlier today Garibashvili says that Saakashvili attempted to stage a coup. 
However, he and his United National Movement (UNM) party planned this ‘in such  a poor and unreasonable manner as they had run the state for nine years.’ 

Garibashvili says that Saakashvili’s psychological condition in prison now is ‘severe’ and he is desperate to leave the detention facility. 

“Neither the UNM members know how to make him free,” Garibashvili says. 

He states that Saakashvili and the UNM failed to consider that the state institutions are  currently powerful in Georgia and that Giorgi Gakharia is no longer the country’s interior minister. 

Gakharia left the premiership and the ruling party back in 2021 due to controversies with the Georgian Dream leadership.

He previously served as the country’s interior minister, including in 2019 when an anti-government rally was dispersed in Tbilisi, leaving dozens injured. 

The GD has accused Gakharia of making an alliance with the UNM.