The king says

Mikhail Saakashvili first spoke in court of himself

On December 2, on Thursday, Saakashvili will have to appear at a court hearing in a series of episodes in connection with Gostrasts for clothes and cosmetologists, who, both his supporters and opponents, ironically call the “case of jackets”.

On Monday, after a fifty -day hunger strike, Saakashvili was first present at the trial of himself - a historical event according to post -Soviet standards, which Misha, as usual, gave an epoch -making flavor.

On a booth near the building of the Tbilisi City Court, a man waving the Georgian flag. The crowd passionately chants: "Misha!"

Before the start of the trial, the police, dispersing the manifestants, spray the pepper spray and delays the supporter of Saakashvili-ex-mayor Tbilisi Gigi Ugulava, immediately taking him away, away from sin, to the town of Marneuli.

The excitement before the court subsides, it is only worth the third president to start talking.

Saakashvili looks stately, losing weight and not lost, and the bites of his oratory skill.

A shirt and a jacket are fitted perfectly, a hunger strike has not always canceled its inherent properties - to look like a needle.

Misha began his speech with a phrase in Ukrainian, discouraging the court, where the clerks began to look out for the consul and say nervously: "We need a translator ..."

“I will translate myself,” the defendant specified, saying, now on Georgian, the first phrase:

“I want you to know, torture was applied to me,” said Saakashvili. “I was taught to withstand them in Ukraine.”

He did not specify what exactly he wanted to say the last phrase.

However, the details voiced by him further can become part of his personal prosecution of the now new Georgian elite - in the event that two sides in this party are destined to change roles.

“... constantly, all day I heard swearing, threats, and this was organized by the administration. I’m not talking about the distribution of my personal personnel, constant calls to weight hunger strikes voiced by high -ranking officials, a good -natured proposal that I have the right to suicide ” - methodically, the fact, as if quoting a statement of claim, Saakashvili listed the details of ordeals in the Gldadan prison.

The Georgian ex-president compared himself to the Medieval Kartlian Tsar Luarsab the second, who died in imprisonment, and called his own arrest only as a “Plenom”.

The defendant’s speech in this court was emotional and sometimes contradictory.

Even before the hearing began, Saakashvili tried to dence the process of himself and the Georgian court itself.

“I do not recognize the prosecutor's office and Georgian justice. I’m not here in order to become part of a pre -written comedy, ”he said in order to add less than an hour in an hour that this court is the result of his own reforms.

“Firstly, my mistake is this court. <...> If a person does not have the feeling that he will find justice in those things where there is interest in the prosecutor’s office, and will be justified, consider that everything we do is thrown into the water. <...> So, of course, the mistake that we could not create an independent court, affected too many of my compatriots and concerns me. ”

One of the judges listening to the case and defending the right of Saakashvili to this speech was admitted - the pressure on herself as a judge she experienced in her career only during the reign of the “nationals” ( the Saakashvili party “a single national movement.” - Ed. ).

The court hearing of this Monday (its continuation was scheduled for the last numbers of December, on the eve of Christmas Eve) concerned dramatic events on November 7, 2007, when the then government of the National Party with the use of force dispersed the protest. On the same day, a special forces burst into the building of the Imtyy’s opposition television channel, putting an end to the media influence of Arkady Badri Patarkatsishvili.

Misha’s main message was the charge against the deceased - the co -owner of NTV and the partner of Berezovsky; The third president called the Georgian oligarch Patarkatsishvili the Third President called the main source of the Russian threat of his reign.

“... three FSB generals arrived, said this ( President of Belarus Alexander. - A. B. ) Lukashenko, who met in advance with Patarkatsishvili,

And Putin announced to them that this is the next president of Georgia. All this happens in September 2007, ”he said.

Thus, Misha first called Patarkatsishvili a man who had undertaken a state trim - a statement that, after the death of the defendant, is even more difficult to check.

The speech of the ex-president was a mixture of emotional slogans and references to the thinnest and most elusive matter of human feelings-hope.

The hope for the resumption of reforms, for a new round of economic growth, for the return of the corrected, wise experience of the “good king” - this is what Saakashvili was, where the truth was generously flavored with fakes and exaggerations.

“I am not a criminal, I am a builder of statehood,” Misha said about himself

(allusion to the nickname and the name of another Georgian king - David the builder). “Of course, I was in a hurry to develop Georgia, and those who are in a hurry always make mistakes. I knew that we had little time, I knew that we needed to do a lot, ”he added.

The president’s speech, read from the sheet, was full of mysticism.

He himself, being an emigrant, devoid of home, I understand this mysticism well and irrational hope for the opportunity to change something by the wave of a magic wand.

This cannot be faked or simulated.

Misha seemed to be sincere at least at least at these moments.

“Every night I dreamed of Georgia, Batumi, Abkhazia, a stadium in my yard, where I went to play football on Beijing Street, and it became an unbearable feeling that I and all of us, Georgians, were losing all this,” -

He said, hitting politics in esotericism.

It seems that Saakashvili was sincere, conveying his experiences inside the prison cell, when one of the bards and cult singers of the prone, torn to the intercusion of Tbilisi came to him in a dream, speaking of the death of his father and one of the first teachers of Misha.

Irakli Charkviani, known under the pseudonym Mepe, or the king who dreamed of Misha behind bars, was the son of a famous diplomat and writer Gela Charkviani, and he himself was the author of nostalgic ballads, who could not help absorb this fused with bohemus, and then unexpectedly became an all -powerful graduate of the University.

The convicted of history with abuse of authority, Saakashvili decided not to take the blame for any of the crimes of his reign.

Speaking about a rigidly depressed rally, for the attack on which he was judged these days, Saakashvili said: “I watched it on TV, I did not give any instructions, and they ( the Georgian police. - A. B. ) performed their duties as they understood and what experience was our police, which was very young and very inexperienced.”

Thus, Saakashvili shifted all the blame for the former Minister of Internal Affairs Vano Merabishvili that had already served at the time. Such tactics are unlikely to add to the ex-president of the allies among his past environment, already fragmented by internal squabbles, persecutions from the team of “dreamers” ( the Georgian Dream party.- Ed. ) And the eight-year absence of his charismatic leader, finally, according to the expression of his beloved bard of Charkviani (“I am crossed by the sea/ not the verification of others that I am not the verification of others that I am not I’ll come ”), the Black Sea that was crossed and found in the center of events when no one was waiting for his house again.

The “fact” the whole speech of the Georgian ex-president is a difficult task.

I dedicated this all night after the first court, checking his testimony with the economic and political map of Georgia and Ukraine - countries that Saakashvili often compared.

He was right in terms of his criticism of the new regime: the “dreamers” accusing him did not mention the brutal attack on the LGBT rally of this year, when the television operator died at the hands of the Orthodox radicals, whose deaths of the Georgian security forces are still trying, if not to falsify, then silence.

Mikhail Saakashvili was right, saying that he “built the country” on the ruins of the 90s, but his statements about the “creation” of Georgian statehood are caused, at best, an ironic smile.

Saakashvili was right, calling his rule a breakthrough in economic reforms, but by his usual he exaggerated and darkened his own successes and the failures of his followers.

On the night after the first judicial speech of the president, I interviewed several economic experts who directly observed the successes and failures of his reforms.

Summarizing, Misha’s strategy was simple - to open the market, gain loans and give all major objects to foreigners.

Loans entered the country for the reform of infrastructure and social services (to the honor of the Nazis team, I must say that these funds were not stolen!), Foreigners bought up land and large objects, and from most local businessmen the government took the business and money, telling them to sit silently.

“They ( the Saakashvili government. - A. B. ) grabbed the Low Hanging Fruits” (“Light target.” - Ed. ), ”Says my interlocutor from among the American Think Tanks ( expert centers ) who worked in Georgia during the reign of“ nationals ”. -Due to the underdevelopment of the market and infrastructure, foreigners tried to leave the country, and there was no legislation for exit. He entered - sit and be silent ... But business, including foreigners, needs fair courts, bankruptcy proceedings, developed infrastructure of the supply chain - all this was not at all in sight. The new government focuses on innovative entrepreneurship with high added value. Misha, on the other hand, ignored all this, selling land, scrap and used machines (which was the main articles of Georgian export until 2013–2014. ”

Now, that is, after 2012, there is a policy to strengthen competition, prevent monopolization and conspiracy in the market. But the market is small, and large foreign companies have nowhere to turn around.

It is the stagnation and the absence of large -scale investments that Misha charges his followers, forgetting that he himself did not manage to lay the foundations of future growth.

But the most unpleasant part of the speech of the Third President was the part dedicated to emigrants.

The emigrant, the former ruler of Georgia, has already forgotten about it, saying about it, speaking of his own kind.

“When I was in Batumi, I walked and saw that many Russians were walking, there are different Russian, some completely rootless, uncertain origin, some provincial Russians who buy 70% of the apartments that are being built there. <...> On television, a lot of Russian channels translated into Georgian are broadcast on television. By the way, nothing of the kind happens in Ukraine, all this is prohibited there, because Ukraine is a country that is at war with Russia, like Georgia, ”Saakashvili said.

There was Misha in this part of the speech and even more curious, shadow subtext.

The current Batumi, teeming in casinos players, tourists and adventurers of all stripes, became local, Caucasian, Las Vegas precisely in the era of his reign.

Walking along a new, similar to a mixture of Turkish Antalya, Latin American Favel and Las Vegas to the city, I cannot get rid of deja vu again and again pursuing a feeling.

Batumi became a kind of center for money laundering of several regional elites.

However, something else is more interesting.

According to the State Register of Property of Georgia, among the "rootless Russians" who own property on the Black Sea coast of Batumi, - the daughter of a Russian politician, a native of Georgia, deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation Otari Arshba.

In the 1992-1993s, during the military conflict in Abkhazia, it was the Arshba, according to the Georgian press, he was one of the main financial sponsors of the separatists.

In the complementary and, apparently, consistent material with it, the Russian Komsomolskaya Pravda calls Otari Arshba a man who "financed the strengthening of the defense capacity of Abkhazia from personal means."

Subsequently, having retired with his work in the special services, the arshba, who grew up in Batumi, a native of the Ochamchirsky district of Abkhazia, became a deputy of the Russian State Duma.

Today, according to the official website of the State Duma, he heads the commission on the reliability of the reliability of information on income, property and property obligations represented by deputies of the State Duma of the Russian Federation.

The hotel of the Arshba family now is a building stylized under the Roman Colosseum on the Batumskaya embankment, thirty meters from the beach, in the new, elite district of the city - the last resort of the Georgian Black Sea region, which remained under the control of Tbilisi.

According to the Georgian website of Owl.news, $ 14 million was invested in the construction of Colosseum Marina Hotel.

The investor acquired the land in 2012 for a symbolic amount - one Lary, or less than 0.3 dollars in the United States.

This deal happened a few months before the fall of the power of the “nationals” and the beginning of the end of the era Mikhail Saakashvili.

Tbilisi -Batumi