The Daily Beat: 11 October
President Salome Zurabishvili is unsure whether she will remain in office as she awaits the constitutional court’s decision and subsequent vote in parliament. “I don’t know how many days I have left as President, but it will be very precious to me that if things go this way, this will be the last time I give an award to such an important person and generation,” President Salome Zurabishvili said at the awards ceremony, presenting Niko Kvaratskhelia with the Medal of Honor. Kvaratskhelia, the 22-year-old founder of content-sharing platform “Feedc,” was fatally wounded in 2021 by multiple shots in the Tbilisi city center and died shortly after being taken to a hospital.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, on an official visit to Georgia, held a face-to-face meeting with Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili. Reportedly, Viktor Orbán will have only one official meeting during his almost three-day visit and will not meet with the opposition or civil society organizations. According to the official press release, during the meeting, PM Garibashvili highlighted Georgia’s “significant progress” in the EU integration process and thanked Viktor Orbán for “unwavering support,” describing Hungary as a “valued friend.”
In an interview with Armenia’s Public Television, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan downplayed Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev’s proposal to consider Georgia a possible venue for peace talks. PM Pashinyan expressed concern over Aliyev’s suggestion, saying that it could be interpreted as an attempt to undermine the already agreed principles and shift to a different negotiation platform.
In an interview with Russian Channel One, Abkhazia’s de facto foreign minister, Inal Ardzinba, voiced Abkhazia’s intention to join the Union State of Russia and Belarus. According to Ardzinba, Abkhazia’s accession to the Union State is entirely in the fundamental interests of the Abkhaz people. Ardzinba also claimed that representatives of Abkhazia are actively studying the experience of building the union state and the interaction between Russia and Belarus in various spheres.
National Bank of Georgia (NBG) bleeds managers as staff exodus from financial regulator continues. Several NBG managers, including the heads of the Regulatory Policy Development Division, the Legal Department, and the Human Resources Management Department, filed their resignations. Staff exodus started shortly after NBG President Natia Turnava’s controversial decision over sanctions enforcement rules, shielding the US-sanctioned former Prosecutor General Otar Partskhaladze.
Georgian military personnel and their Turkish and Azerbaijani counterparts took part in the trilateral command and post exercise ETERNITY 2023, conducted in Baku on a rotational basis, according to a report from the Defense Ministry (MOD). The representatives of the Interior Ministry’s Strategic Pipelines Protection Department (SPPD) also participated in the exercise. MOD reported that the exercise aimed to ensure the security of regional economic projects, including the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.
