The Ex-Presidents
Op-Ed
Salome Zurabishvili got 59.52 % in the second round of the presidential elections and her inauguration ceremony took place on December 16 in the Royal Palace of King Erekle II in Telavi, where she vowed and has now officially become the fifth President of Georgia. And while Ms. Zurabishvili was giving her speech, the supporters of the third president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, tried to break the police cordon and hold a protest rally in the same town. At the same time, the supporters of the first President of Georgia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, gathered in the foyer of the General Prosecutor’s Office to demand the investigation of a 25-year-old case remain open, and announced the launch of a hunger strike in that regard.
On the night of December 31, 1993, a few hours before New Year’s Eve, the supporters of President Gamsakhurdia found him dead in the village of Khibula in the Samegrelo region. The official version and the report from the Prosecutor’s Office of the time suggested that he had committed suicide. Since then, every ruling party and government has tried to resume the investigation, but we have yet to see results. Discussions revolving around the question as to whether he was killed or he really committed suicide are still popular. Neither Saakashvili’s government nor the billionaire’s Georgian Dream have been able to put a full stop to this controversy. And soon, when the quarter-century passes after the Khibula tragedy, its sell-by date will also come, meaning the investigation will be terminated and the case will find itself on the dusty shelves forever. The supporters of the first president of the country threatened a hunger strike unless the limitation period is prolonged by Georgian legislation.
The issue of continuing or terminating the case regarding the death of the first President of Georgia might not seem popular within modern political marketing, but if we look closer, in fact it really does. With the death of Gamsakhurdia came an end to the civil war, which started off the so-called bloody revolution of December-January, later continued with the war in Abkhazia and finally finished with armed clashes in Samegrelo. During these events, the first President of Georgia was exiled from the country and the then-ruling government lead a legal persecution after him.
Like Gamsakhurdia, the third President of Georgia also fled and he is also being investigated by the Prosecutor’s Office. Also, Saakashvili is blamed for a thousand vices that happened during his presidency and most importantly it is Saakashvili who is considered the main source of political destabilization in the country. In order to fully recuperate the dramaturgy – we need the final scene.
This is a theme which has been discussed on social networks, with people wondering whether Saakashvili will return from Amsterdam, just as Gamsakhurdia returned 25 years ago from Grozno. In those times, Gamsakhurdia was accused of being cowardly by his opponents: the same here, as billionaire Ivanishvili has said that Saakashvili is even afraid of using the lifts, fearing not to get stuck. In parallel to such comments, in reality the Government of Georgia is afraid of the possibility of such a scenario and the circles of political experts even say that Saakashvili’s return to the homeland could resemble a neatly launched grenade for the government, whether in jail or at home on Zandukeli Street.
As for the position of Saakashvili himself, in one of his interviews, he said: “Do they think of me as a wheeled bust, that they can roll onto the stage when needed and roll out back behind the scenes, when they don’t need me anymore?” Generally, this “freelancer” is a very clever, smart, astute and talented politician. No one in Georgia can compare to him now, which is why he is the only person who knows whether Saakashvili will return to Georgia by 2020 or not.
By Zaza Jgarkava