Labor Party Slams Businesses for Financing Only Saakashvili

The opposition Labor Party has criticized the Georgian business community for financially backing only Mikheil Saakashvili’s election campaign.

“You [referring to businesspeople] have misappropriated everything ranging from depositors’ wealth [referring to those who lost Soviet-era bank deposits after the break-up of the Soviet Union] to factories and national wealth,” Giorgi Gugava, Labor Party leader Shalva Natelashvili’s campaign manager, said at a news conference on December 7.

“You [again referring to businesspeople], instead of helping socially vulnerable people or opposition parties, financially backed illegally armed formations [in the early 1990s], [ex-President] Shevardnadze’s regime and now you are financing the murderer of his own people, Mikheil Saakashvili.”

He claimed the Saakashvili campaign had raised “hundreds of millions” from the business community. The money, he said, would help Saakashvili “usurp power.”

“If you really want to do something good, you should finance all political parties equally, including the leading opposition presidential candidate, Shalva Natelashvili,” Gugava added.

Meanwhile, Natelashvili, campaigning for the January 5 presidential polls, told a group of students on December 7 that the election would spell the end to “Saakashvili’s bloody regime.”