Saakashvili demands gov’t schedule trials ‘to tell the truth’

Georgian currently arrested third president Mikheil Saakashvili has demanded the Georgian Dream (GD) government schedule trials involving him, instead of sharing his ‘smiling videos from various resorts.’ 

 

Saakashvili, who has been convicted and charged in Georgian for several offences, posted on his Facebook account earlier today that the trials will allow him to ‘tell the truth about everything for the international community and the Georgian people.’ 

 

“But you (the GD) are afraid of the truth most of all,” Saakashvili said. 

 

The former president, who was arrested in Tbilisi after eight years in political exile, claims that he is a ‘personal prisoner’ of Russian president Vladimir Putin and the founder of the Georgian Dream ruling party, Bidzina Ivanishvili, and that all charges against him on abuse of authority and four others, are politically motivated. 

 

In his second post today, Saakashvili praised himself as a reformer who had managed to transform the country between 2003 and 2012. 

 

“People protested (last week) against the oligarch (Ivanishvili) who captured the Georgian state in 2012 after my government’s reforms that turned the country from a failed state to the World Bank’s number 1 reformer, as well as one of the top ten countries of the Transparency International anti-corruption index,” Saakashvili said. 

 

He reiterated that he returned to ‘save the country.’ 

 

“And here I am in a solitary cell, on the third week of a hunger strike.There are numerous important messages that my imprisonment sends,” Saakashvili stated. 

 

He said that the messages include holding free and fair elections, hearing the advice of foreign friends and ‘the message all the other leaders in the region get, don’t ever listen to anyone, don’t give up power, as it means giving up your freedom or maybe life.’ 

 

He stated that last week, when thousands of Georgians gathered in central Tbilisi to demand Saakashvili’s release,’ proved that we, Georgians, want to be free.”

 

The Georgian Dream government says that all charges against Saakashvili are ‘in the full line with the law,’ and that Saakashvili ‘is trying to stage a show with his hunger strike.’