New Governor of Guria Region Appointed
PM Irakli Garibashvili appointed on May 11 Gia Salukvadze as new governor of Guria region in western Georgia.
The post was vacant since December, 2014, when the previous governor Giorgi Chkhaidze resigned.
Newly appointed governor of Guria, Gia Salukvadze, made headlines in March as he was one of the organizers of series of controversial screenings of a video clip, “Saakashvili’s Bloody Regime”, in various parts of the country. Events sparked outcry after it emerged that public school pupils in some towns in western Georgia were taken in an organized way to attend the screenings of the video showing graphic images, among them of inhuman treatment of inmates.
In 2011 Salukvadze was involved in anti-government demonstration, led by ex-parliament speaker Nino Burjanadze, which was violently dispersed overnight on May 26, 2011; few days later Salukvadze was arrested and consequently jailed for resisting police – charges, which he was denying as politically motivated. After the GD coalition came into power, the Parliament included him in the list of “political prisoners” and was released as part of a broad amnesty in early 2013.
Most recently Salukvadze worked as an adviser to CEO of SakRusEnergo, a joint venture of the Georgian government and Russia’s state electricity giant Unified Energy System, which operates high-voltage power transmission line between Georgia and Russia.
