The Daily Beat: 9 January
The ruling party’s Executive Secretary and GD parliamentary Majority Leader, Mamuka Mdinaradze, announced that the GD parliament plans to establish a temporary investigative commission to probe into alleged crimes committed by the UNM government from 2003 to 2012. Mdinaradze’s announcement goes in line with Bidzina Ivanishvili’s campaign promise to finally bring to justice all former UNM officials responsible for various atrocities.
Speaking at her first official briefing in the new office, since vacating Orbeliani Palace at the end of last year, President Salome Zurabishvili confirmed that she would attend the inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump on January 20. She also spoke of “very deep” political crises, emphasizing the need for new elections.
Georgian Dream’s Defense Minister Irakli Chikovani participated in the 25th Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, the Defense Ministry reported. It is the first visit by a senior Georgian Dream official to an EU country other than Orban’s Hungary, amid the disputed legitimacy of October’s parliamentary elections and growing international isolation.
Radio Free Europe/RL Tbilisi Office, citing its sources, reported that the US Congress sent a letter addressed to a nominee for State Secretary Marko Rubio, informing him of the “GD’s authoritarian rule,” and “Georgia’s tilt toward the axis of aggression of China, Russia, and Iran.” According to RFE/RL, the letter also lists the names of Ivanishvili’s “enablers” responsible for elite corruption, propaganda, and repression.
Republican Joe Wilson, R-S.C., Chairman of the Helsinki Commission, and Democrat Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., introduced the “Georgian Nightmare Non-Recognition Act” in the U.S. Congress, barring recognition or normalization of relations “with any Government of Georgia that is led by Bidzina Ivanishvili or any proxies due to the Ivanishvili regime’s ongoing crimes against the Georgian people.”