Mikheil Saakashvili promised to return to power in Tbilisi from Kyiv

Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili announced that he and his team will be able to return to power no later than 2016, when parliamentary elections will be held in the country. Although the experts interviewed by Kommersant do not particularly believe in Saakashvili’s return, they nevertheless do not completely rule out this possibility.

Mikheil Saakashvili took up the post of freelance adviser to the President of Ukraine, refusing the post of Deputy Prime Minister
Photo: Nikolay Lazarenko/Pool, Kommersant / buy photo

Mikheil Saakashvili gave a long interview to the Rustavi-2 television company in his new office in the building of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine. He occupied this huge office, receiving the post of freelance adviser to Petro Poroshenko and head of the advisory international reform council under the President of Ukraine. Judging by the words of Mikheil Saakashvili, he does not like his new workplace. “I’m unaccustomed to Soviet offices. When I walk into the presidential administration here, I remember Georgia in 2003. In reality, this is still an old, unreformed country that has gone into a deep crisis,” he complained.

Mikheil Saakashvili said that he had previously rejected the offer of the Ukrainian president to take the post of first deputy prime minister, for which he would have had to accept Ukrainian citizenship, giving up his Georgian passport. According to the ex-president, Petro Poroshenko told him: “You are really needed in Kyiv, we have a common struggle.” And to the question “What kind of struggle?” the Ukrainian leader replied: “Reform Front.” Mikheil Saakashvili sees his main task in his new post as “preparing programs for economic and military reforms, general reform of the state apparatus and anti-corruption reform.”

However, the Georgian ex-president does not intend to stay in Kyiv for a long time. He urged supporters to wait for the 2016 parliamentary elections, when, according to him, there will be a change of power in Tbilisi and he will return to Georgia. However, this statement by Mr. Saakashvili contradicts his recent statements that the opposition “will not be able to change the power of the Russian oligarch Ivanishvili as a result of the elections.” “The Georgian people will be able to consolidate at a decisive historical moment, just like in 2003,” he pointedly noted, referring to the “Rose Revolution” and the bloodless overthrow of his predecessor Eduard Shevardnadze.

Mikheil Saakashvili's interview caused a great resonance in Georgia. Although the majority of experts interviewed by Kommersant do not believe that the ex-president and his team can return to power, they nevertheless do not completely rule out this possibility. “The majority of the people hate them, because they remember well what their rule resulted in,” former head of the state chancellery Petre Mamradze told Kommersant. However, he admitted that in the event of hyperinflation, Mikheil Saakashvili could still break into power again, “taking advantage of general discontent.”

Earlier, the head of the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs, Vakhtang Gomelauri, warned: the opposition “are preparing large-scale provocations in the country.” However, one of the leaders of the United National Movement opposition party, David Darchiashvili, assured Kommersant that the opposition is not preparing to start a revolution, but intends to fight for power “exclusively peacefully, democratically, based on the democratic will of the people.”

Georgiy Dvali, Tbilisi

The Georgian people received an interview from the front