Ian Kelly: both Garibashvili, Saakashvili ‘poison in the body politic’

The US former ambassador to Georgia Ian Kelly says that both Georgia’s ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili, who returned to Georgia at the end of september after eight years in political exile, and the country’s current PM Irakli Garibashvili ‘are a poison in the body politic.’

 

“As are all politicians, including in my country, who choose conflict and personal power over the national interests,” Kelly has tweeted. 

 

By the statement Kelly responded to Garibashvili’s recent letter in which the PM said that ‘neither the drug addiction, nor the wish to go to prison’ pushed Saakashvili to return from Ukraine ahead of the October 2 municipal elections in Georgia. 

 

Garibashvili claimed that Saakashvili, who was convicted for two separate cases in Georgia back in 2018 and has been charged with four other cases, returned to stage a coup.However, he and Saakashvili’s United National Movement opposition party ‘planned the operation in such a poorly manner as they had run the country for nine years.’