Ex-PM Gakharia Talks EU Integration, Berates Bidzina Ivanishvili

24/12/2022 - 17:06

Giorgi Gakharia, founder of For Georgia party. Photo: Facebook.com/ForGeoGe

On December 23, a video segment of Giorgi Gakharia, the leader of the For Georgia opposition party, surfaced on the internet. The video is apparently from his meeting with supporters in the central Georgian town of Gori. Gakharia served as the Minister of Interior, and then Prime Minister for the ruling Georgian Dream before resigning abruptly in 2021. In the video, Gakharia speaks about the opportunity being missed for Georgia to advance toward the EU and, in this context, berates his former boss, Bidzina Ivanishvili. This is the first open public criticism of Gakharia towards his former patron and boss, Ivanishvili.

Gakharia is heard speaking about “personal accountability” for failures on the path towards the EU, “Georgia’s fate is being determined now, and [the consequences of] the achievements and mistakes made by this country [Georgia] over the last 30-35 years will be revealed in the next one or two years,” he says.

According to Gakharia, the war in Ukraine has created an opportunity for Georgia to join the European family rapidly, something that would have taken 20-30 years otherwise. Yet, he argued, the country may waste the chance “due to some incompetent idiots” referring to the Eurosceptic officials. Gakharia blamed the “inept, irresponsible government” for ignoring the European aspirations of the “85% of the citizens.”

Gakharia continued: “if Bidzina [Ivanishvili] believes that he won’t be personally held accountable just because he said he left politics and now has his puppets do his bidding, he is utterly mistaken”.

Reactions

The ruling party’s response to criticism from their former colleague came so far mainly from the back-benchers. Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Nikoloz Samkharadze said Gakharia’s statement reflected “double standards” since the former PM was silent about the “so-called informal influence” of Ivanishvili during his premiership.

MP Mikheil Kavelashvili, from the maverick anti-Western “People’s Power” faction that supports the government, said Gakharia has “become a part of the network of agents” and that he “was bought”. He also reminded Gakharia of the times when his Georgian Dream colleagues were “defending him with their bodies” when the ex-PM was vilified by the opposition and protesters.

Former Prime Minister Gakharia has not been seen in public for some time, and his recent remarks were widely covered in the media. He resigned in February 2021, citing disagreement with then his Georgian Dream party colleagues over the detention of Nika Melia, leader of the UNM. This followed the Tbilisi City Court’s decision to send United National Movement’s Nika Melia, Chairperson of the largest opposition party, to pretrial detention. Soon Gakharia inaugurated a new For Georgia opposition party.

Gakharia became a highly polarizing figure in Georgian politics in 2019. Civic activists and the opposition hold him responsible for the police crackdown on Tbilisi protests on June 20-21, 2019 in front of the Parliament building, where thousands of activists and opposition protested the visit of a Russian delegation at inter-parliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy in the Georgian Parliament on June 20.

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