Ruling Party Starts Talks, Ignored by Most of the Opposition

Dimitri Shashkin, the minister for probation and prison system, who is tasked by the President to hold dialogue with the opposition met with representatives of three parties, which are all part of the parliamentary minority group.

The meeting was held in frames of the ruling party’s March 31 proposal to start talks on the three most urgent issues involving economy, national security and democratic reforms. The opposition parties, planning to launch protest rallies from April 9, have rejected the proposal.

MP Levan Vepkhvadze of the Christian-Democratic Movement (CDM), who is a vice-speaker of the parliament; MP Dimitri Lortkipanidze of On Our Own party and MP Guram Chakhvadze of the National-Democratic Party and leader of the same party, Bachuki Kardava, were participating in the meeting with Dimitri Shashkin. MP Pavle Kublashvili of the ruling part was also participating. Some representatives of civil society were also invited. Koki Ionatamishvili of the New Generation-New Initiative (nGnI) and a political analyst Soso Tsintsadze were also attending the meeting.

MP Levan Vepkhvadze of CDM told journalists before the meeting that he would proposal three key issues, which he said, should become a basis for further rounds of talks. The first condition, he said, should be that the talks should be conducted in the Georgian Patriarchate in order to increase credibility of the process. He said the venue would serve as a guarantee that the agreements reached would be fulfilled. The second condition, he said, was that leaders of the political parties should be directly involved in the talks. “Mikheil Saakashvili is not only the President, but he is also the leader of National Movement Party, so he should participate in the negotiations,” MP Vepkhvadze said. The third condition, he continued, was that no one should put forth any pre-conditions for participation in talks.

After the meeting Dimitri Shashkin said that a state commission would be set up, which would focus on those three issues, which has been proposal by the ruling party. Levan Vepkhvadze of CDM said after the meeting that the state commission would work on constitutional reform. He also reiterated that President Saakashvili should reach out all the opposition parties in order to make process productive.

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