I.n Georgia, local elections, which were held on Saturday, are going into a second round in many places with casting votes for mayor’s offices – and there is no end in sight to the political crisis in the South Caucasian country. According to the results published on Sunday morning, the ruling party Georgian Dream was well ahead of the most important opposition force, the United National Movement (UNM) around former President Mikheil Saakashvili; she got a total of just under 49 percent compared to a good 31 percent. But there were signs of a runoff election for the mayor’s office in a number of cities, including the capital Tbilisi, where around a third of the country’s residents live. There the UNM had nominated its chairman, Nika Melia, as a candidate.
Melia’s arrest for a refusal to provide bail in an investigation into calls for violent protests sparked a new round of the ongoing crisis last spring. In an unusual step, the EU finally issued bail and Melia was released from custody. Part of the deal was that the Georgian Dream should call for new parliamentary elections should the party come in below 43 percent in the local elections. Most of the opposition parties see the parliamentary elections almost a year ago as illegitimate, which the ruling party rejects. After the agreement brokered by the EU, some parties ended a blockade and took up their mandates in parliament. Last July, however, the Georgian Dream distanced itself from the compromise on possible new elections.
Saakashvili is said to be on hunger strike
From Brussels as well as from Washington, in whose alliances Georgia, which is hostile to Russia, is aspiring, in view of the tensions repeatedly came worried statements, also with a view to the most recent developments: Last Friday, Saakashvili, Georgia’s President from 2004 to 2013, was in from Ukraine returned to his homeland. After confusion about his whereabouts – the ruling party claimed he was still in Ukraine, the UNM had already located him in Georgia – Saakashvili was arrested that evening at the UNM headquarters in Tbilisi.
TV images showed police officers taking the smiling, handcuffed returnees to a detention center. He is said to have started a hunger strike in a prison in the city of Rustavi. Saakashvili had called for the UNM election in video messages on Friday morning and shortly before his arrest, saying that he had “risked my life and my freedom to be back” and that he would “fight to the end”. Saakashvili left Georgia after the end of his presidency and was sentenced to two prison terms in absentia, which he rejects as political persecution. A new criminal case has now been initiated for unauthorized entry. Saakashvili gave up his Georgian citizenship, has been a Ukrainian citizen since 2015 and heads the National Reform Council in Kiev. In Kiev, the Georgian ambassador was summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. President Volodymyr Zelenskyi asked for an explanation of the arrest. Georgia’s President Salome Zurabishvili has ruled out pardoning Saakashvili.
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