Saakashvili: 'Let me into Georgia and see who will win the election'

Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili urged the incumbent President Giorgi Margvelashvili to return his Georgian citizenship to him and give him the opportunity to participate in the presidential elections this week:

“Let me into Georgia and you’ll see who will be met by millions of people and who will win the elections,” Saakashvili said in an interview with Rustavi-2 television channel.

Saakashvili called President Margvelashvili a coward and himself the founder of the Georgian state:

“Margvelashvili is an absolute coward because he deprived me of citizenship. If he has elementary courage, if he can stand for anything, he would return my Georgian citizenship. They pronounced my sentence and forbade me to take part in political activities.

“Unfortunately, non-governmental organizations are silent. Where are they? Why do they not raise their voices when the founder of the Georgian state is not allowed to return to Georgia?” Saakashvili said.

According to him, if he returns to Georgia, he will certainly win the presidential election:

“I have nothing but clean hands and my reputation. Let me into Georgia and we will show who they are afraid of and who they scare the people with, let me in and then see who will win the elections,” he stated.

•   Mikhail Saakashvili, the third president of Georgia, left after the presidential elections in 2013 and has not returned since. He would be arrested in the event of his return to his homeland.

In 2014, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko granted Saakashvili Ukrainian citizenship and appointed him governor of the Odessa region. In 2016, after resigning as governor, he created an opposition party and began to fight President Poroshenko, who has caused him problems in Ukraine. Saakashvili was deprived of Ukrainian citizenship, and was deported from the country in February 2018. A criminal case has been launched against him in Ukraine.

Saakashvili is presently in the Netherlands. He stated that he continues to fight against oligarchic rule in Ukraine and Georgia.

Criminal charges were brought against him on four issues in Georgia – abuse of office, disbanding a peaceful rally and an independent television station, beating a member of parliament and embezzling public funds.

The court issued two verdicts against him this year:

In January 2018, he was sentenced to three years in prison for pardoning individuals convicted in the case of the murder of a bank employee, Sandro Girgviliani.

On 28 June the court found Saakashvili guilty of organizing the beating of opposition MP Valery Gelashvili and sentenced him to six years in prison in absentia. Saakashvili says that the court was politically motivated and likens it to ‘Kennedy’s assassination’.